A NICU nurse adopted her patient, a 14-year-old teen mom with triplets, to stop them from getting separated in foster care

• Katrina Mullen developed a strong bond with her patient, Shariya Small, 14, a teen mom of triplets.
• Rather than have Small be separated from her children in foster care, Mullen took them in as her own.

A Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) nurse saw her patient, a 14-year-old mom of premature triplets, struggling to care for her children. Fearing they would all be sent to foster care and separated, she decided to take them all in and raise them as her own.

Katrina Mullen, a nurse working at Community Hospital North in Indianapolis, was assigned to Shariya Small, a teenager with two sickly baby girls and a boy, The Washington Post reported. Mullen herself was a single mother of five children and had become a teen mom at the age of 16.

"I am very familiar with how scary it is to be pregnant at a young age like that," Mullen told Small, per the Post. "If you need anything, if you need to talk, I'm here."

Over the five months that the babies — Serenitee, Samari, and Sarayah — were at the hospital after their birth in August 2020, Mullen and Small developed a strong bond, The Post reported.

Even after the babies were discharged in January 2021, Small continued to call Mullen, desperate for help with child-rearing, per The Post.

Mullen visited Small, who was living about an hour away in a relative's house, and was dismayed to see that the babies shared one playpen and bassinet between them, and Small slept on a couch.

Shortly after, Mullen received notification from Child Protective Services that Small and her children would all be put into the foster care system and separated. Mullen was also informed that Small had indicated that she would like to stay with her, per The Post.

So rather than have Small and her family separated in the foster care system, Mullen decided to foster Small and her triplets. On April 9, 2021, she took them into her home, which she shares with her own sons, aged eight, 15, and 16, per The Post.

"I didn't even think it through," Mullen said. "Everybody in my life thought I was insane, and I probably was at that point, but I could not let her be separated from them," she told The Post.

And on February 6 this year, Mullen formally adopted Small as her daughter, per The Post, becoming the grandmother of the triplets.

She commemorated the milestone with a post on her Instagram, which showed the large family, with the caption: "It's ADOPTION DAY!!! We are forever family."

She added: "After 5 months as her NICU mama and 668 days as her foster mama She's MY DAUGHTER FOREVER AND EVER."

Mullen has also started a GoFundMe that hopes to provide a "financial cushion" for her daughter.

The GoFundMe, which says that it will go towards "college funding, housing costs, a car" for Small and her babies, exceeded its target of $20,000 and has raised more than $57,000, as of press time.

Mullen did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment sent outside regular working hours.