Surgeon adopted baby with rare birth defect after saving her life

Dr. Christine Finck, a mother-of-three, nursed a child back to health only to adopt her a year later.

WGN reported that Dr. Finck of Connecticut Children’s Medical Center met Isabelle at the beginning of her career in 2006.

The pediatric surgeon would always tell her colleagues that it was not the right to think about motherhood. All that changed one day when she met a little girl.

Dr. Finck met her oldest daughter in 2006. Currently the surgeon-in-chief, she now has three children, whose photos adorn her office at the hospital.

She was working in Philadelphia then and it was one of the first nights she was the on-call doctor. She got the call in the middle of the night.

The little girl, who was born with some birth defects, needed immediate help. Finck said, “One of the birth defects happened to be that her intestines were outside of her body, and she was pretty sick.”

The doctors and the nurses helped the baby recover and she was ready to go home in a few months. However, the girl’s mother said she could not take care of her.

Finck decided to take Isabelle home when she was about a year old.

Adoption was an easy choice for the doctor and her husband, who at that point were ready to expand their family. They knew Isabelle was the one.

“I had grown very close to her. I was at her bedside a lot, and I think watching her frail but tough spirit made me just feel a special connection with her.”

Dr. Christine Finck, WGN, May 25, 2018.

The NICU nurses would always tell her that she was going to take the baby home and it turned out to be true.

Now, more than a decade later, Finck realizes how her path to motherhood shaped her career. She is more empathetic towards other parents.

Throughout her surgical training and pediatric surgery, she had always maintained that it was not the right time to have children. She is glad she waited because some of the emotional connections she has now, could have “derailed” her.

She has realized that she is not taking care of the children alone, but also their parents. Being a mother, she understands the bigger picture.