It’s been six months since someone dropped off a newborn baby in a Florida Safe Haven at the Ocala Fire Rescue. And now she’s right where she belongs with her adoptive family.
The responding firefighter found the baby with her umbilical cord tied off with a shoelace – now baby Zoey has been formally adopted by her rescuer.
Baby Zoey is happy, thriving, and healthy with her new adoptive family.
Zoey’s rescuer and his wife had been trying to start a family for a decade before she appeared.
“I didn’t call my wife right away because I didn’t want to wake her up, but I knew she’d be on board,” he says of his plan. He would go to the hospital with the baby, and inquire about adopting her.
The firefighter wrote a note and left it with Zoey at the hospital.
“I explained that my wife and I had been trying for 10 years to have a baby. I told them we’d completed all of our classes in the state of Florida and were registered to adopt,” he says. “All we needed was a child.”
When the firefighter finally spoke to his wife, she started crying.
“I was like, ‘Don’t get too excited yet,’” he says. “My biggest fear was that the note I wrote wouldn’t stay with Zoey and she’d be gone. It was a very stressful few days.”
Zoey was placed in the station’s Safe Haven Baby Box on Jan. 2. On Jan. 4, she was home with the firefighter and his wife.
The firefighter says he’s sharing the story in hopes that it gives Zoey’s biological mother “some closure.”
“We want her to know that her child is taken care of and that she’s loved beyond words,” he says. One detail he learned later from the hospital is that the baby’s umbilical cord had been tied off with a shoelace.
Credit: Today Show, Click Orlando, Aol,