10/23/2025
Ancient wisdom. This is medicine.
My name is Laura, I’m 35 years old, and I have Down syndrome.
In the morning, I work in a bookstore.
But the afternoon… the afternoon belongs to them — the children.
It all began three years ago, when my mother was in the hospital.
Every day I walked past the neonatal unit.
Until one day, I saw a sign:
“Volunteers needed for skin-to-skin contact program.”
I walked in.
“Can I help?” I asked the nurse.
She looked me up and down, with one of those looks I’ve known all my life.
But then she called the coordinator, Marta.
Marta explained the rules, the protocols, the responsibilities.
And I said something simple:
“Everyone needs someone to hold them.
If there are babies who have no one, I can be that someone.”
She said yes.
Since then, every day from 3 to 6, I put on my light blue gown, wash my hands carefully, and I hold.
I hold babies who are waiting — babies born too early, or born into complicated stories.
One of them is named Tomás.
He was born at six months, weighing just over a kilo.
When I hold him against my chest, skin to skin, his breathing slows.
And so does my heart.
But that Tuesday, something changed.
I was holding Tomás when I heard shouting in the hallway.
“Make way! He’s my son!”
A young woman, desperate, was looking for her baby — Felipe.
She had been in another hospital, injured, separated from him since birth.
Now she was terrified it was too late.
“He’s not responding to stimuli,” they told her.
“It’s like he doesn’t want to wake up.”
And she cried.
“I wasn’t there. What if he thinks I abandoned him? What if that’s why he’s given up?”
I couldn’t stand still.
I went over quietly.
“My name is Laura,” I said. “I don’t work here. But I come to hold the babies.”
She looked at me, surprised.
“You’ve held my Felipe?”
“No. But I can. Or, if you want, you can.”
And so she did.
Marta helped her get ready.
They placed the little one on her chest.
He didn’t move.
She cried softly.
“Forgive me. I’m here now. Your mommy’s here.”
Then I whispered:
“Sing to him.”
“I can’t sing,” she said.
“Neither can I. But babies don’t care. They just care that it’s you.”
She closed her eyes and began to sing.
A lullaby in a language I didn’t know — a song from her grandmother, she told me later.
After a few minutes… Felipe moved his fingers.
He grabbed his mother’s gown.
Then he opened his eyes.
Big, deep eyes that found hers.
And in that moment, something stronger than medicine happened.
Love happened.
When I left, I told her softly:
“Felipe is lucky. His mom came back for him. And she sang.”
On the bus ride home, I looked out the window and smiled.
Everyone thinks I give hugs because I have so much love to give.
And that’s true.
But every time a baby calms down, every time a mother finds her child again…
I heal a little, too.
Because it doesn’t matter who we are or what they told us we couldn’t do.
What matters is to be there.
To hold.
To stay.
And that — I know how to do.
