QUINETTA WILLIAMS

Having a baby at 44 is a life-changing experience, and when that infant is born prematurely and weighs less than 2 pounds, a family faces months of worry and stress.

Celia and Rodney Smith's daughter, Amaya, was delivered nearly three months early at Northside Hospital in Atlanta.

"Our lives were an emotional roller-coaster ride," Celia Smith said. "We were at the hospital every day, and we prayed all the time. We weren't sure our little Amaya would survive the prematurity and medical issues."

Today, Amaya is 11 months old and thriving. The Smith family gives much of the credit to Quinetta Williams, who works in the neonatal intensive care unit at Northside.

"Right from the beginning we became very close," Smith said of Williams, RN. "She would surprise me with e-mail photos on my computer at work and gave Amaya as much physical attention as possible — holding her, rocking her or just walking up and down the hall with our baby."

Williams, 40, felt a calling to be a neonatal nurse at an early age.

"I'd dress up my baby dolls and take their temperature under their arms," Williams said. "I always knew I wanted to work with babies."

After earning a nursing degree, Williams started her nursing career in medical surgery. But it wasn't long before her desire to care for babies called Williams to the neonatal intensive care unit at Florida Hospital in Orlando. Five years ago, she moved to Atlanta to work in the neonatal ICU at Northside. "I was back where I needed to be, working with babies," she said.

Amaya Smith has been home with her parents for several months, but Williams stays in touch with the family.

"She brought Amaya a Valentine's basket and an Easter basket, and she often stops in to visit her at the day care right down the street from the hospital," Smith said. "Our baby still remembers her familiar voice, the voice of her guardian angel."