A nurse who always wanted to have a family found one when she met a baby who never got any visitors

What's the story?

Liz Smith is the director of nursing at Franciscan Children's Hospital in Brighton, Massachusetts. She said that she had always wanted to have a family, but it had never worked out.

"It just seemed natural that I would go to college, get my nursing degree, meet a guy, get married and have children," she told NBC's "Today." "Becoming a nurse was easy, but becoming a mom was not."

Gisele was born premature in July 2016, and weighed just 2 pounds. Her birth mother had used heroin, cocaine, and methadone while she was pregnant. As a result, Gisele had neonatal abstinence syndrome and had to go through withdrawal.

When her parents didn't come to claim her, she became a ward of the state. She was moved to Franciscan Children's hospital to get the care she needed. She spent five months being treated without anyone visiting or caring.

That's when Smith saw her for the first time.

"Who's this beautiful little angel?" Smith recalled asking a nurse. She said that very night she knew she wanted to foster Gisele.

She began visiting Gisele every day at the hospital, and eventually got permission to take her out of the hospital and bring her home.

What else?

Smith started off fostering Gisele, but when the state of Massachusetts decided that the girl's biological parents were unfit to raise her, Smith applied to adopt her. This paperwork was finalized on Oct. 18.

"The experience of being a mom is like nothing I've ever imagined," a grateful Smith told NBC. "Every day there's something different about Gisele, and it's just an experience that you can't even describe."