‘Shoebox baby’ thrives
Coates did stay in school, as Joseph had hoped, graduating from high school and then from Rock Valley College in Rockford to become a certified nursing assistant. Memories of Joseph weighed heavily on Coates as she worked for seven years as a nursing assistant at Rockford Memorial Hospital, and then Banner Thunderbird Medical Center in Glendale, Ariz., where she relocated in 2013.
Her son, Allen, also reached one milestone after another.
Although he began talking later than most children and had a speech impediment early on, he excelled with special education services. By the fourth grade, he was enrolled in mainstream classes and reading at a ninth-grade level, his mother said.
Cherish and Allen Coates, now living in Phoenix, Ariz., show off the original shoebox he was placed in after his home birth in Rockford, Ill., in 2004. Cherish wrapped the premature newborn in towels and put him in a bigger box so his father could take him to Swedish American hospital.
Today, he loves playing soccer, running cross country, trying new video games and watching football.
Coates and other family members have told Allen about the circumstances of his birth. Now a teenager himself, the boy makes jokes about his unusual beginnings.
“I told him I was going to return him back to the hospital one day because he was acting up, and he told me: ‘You can’t return me back to the hospital, I will have to return back to my great-grandparents’ house.'”
Allen’s father and Coates separated when the boy was 4, and he is no longer in touch with Coates or their son, she said.
Early last year, Joseph received a Facebook message from Coates and was brought to tears, proud to learn that Coates had stayed in school and humbled to know she was part of her inspiration. To this day, the nurse insists she didn’t do anything for Coates that her colleagues wouldn’t have done.
Joseph, who still works full time at SwedishAmerican’s special care nursery, thought of Coates regularly over the years — when there were cold, snowy days in April, like the day Allen was born; whenever a young mother came into the nursery surrounded by family; on Mother’s Day.
The two are not sure when they will see each other, but they remain in regular contact online.
“It just makes me think, ‘Wow, every interaction you have with anybody is so important,'” Joseph said. “To be able to be in this position where I’m part of someone’s story of their life — that’s such an honor.”
Registered nurse Jeannie Joseph tends to a baby in the special care nursery at SwedishAmerican hospital in Rockford in September.
Credits: chicagotribune.com