This guest post is by Angela Boucher, an adoptive mother.
For several years now each November I am honoured to write for National Adoption Month. As I reflected on something to write this year four words about my adoption journey came to mind: Promise, Hope, Wonder and Love.
Promise
I grew up in a large family. I always looked forward to Sunday dinners, and holidays spent around the table. The table was filled with those I loved both family and friends alike.
When I met my husband I couldn’t wait to start a family and fill our table with Promise. Not long after we married we attempted to start our family.
Soon our promise began to fade as we realised that it wasn’t happening the way we thought it would! After six rounds of IVF, numerous IUI’s and a failed donor egg cycle our promise was gone and we were heart broken.
Hope
It took several months for us to put the puzzle pieces together. We took time to heal, to grieve and to find hope!
We choose to move forward with adoption. At that moment, for us, we felt like it had become a question of when and not if we would become a family.
It was not an easy decision. I had always dreamed of pregnancy and childbirth. Infertility had taken our promise. It broke us emotionally, physically and financially.
Nonetheless we would not let it define us. I came to the realisation that pregnancy lasted nine months but motherhood lasts a lifetime if we are lucky.
Shortly after our family and friends railed around us. They reinforced that hope by hosting a benefit in our honour to help us raise funds. Not long after that we signed with an agency and were on our way.
Wonder
As we waited I was filled with wonder!
There were many days where time would drag on and feel like months. I got through those days by focusing on the wonder of when our adoption would happen!
I tried my best to get through each day by focusing on the positive. It wasn’t always easy but somehow deep down I knew motherhood was around the corner.
After 11 months (!) we got the car and found out that we had been matched with the birth mother.
Love
On March 9 of 2012 I learned what true love was! That was the day our son was born. In that moment I knew exactly what unconditional overflowing love felt like.
My promise, hope, and wonder had become a reality the moment I held my son for the very first time. I knew that everything had happened exactly as it should have because it had all brought him to me.
Let me just say that it was not an easy road but I would not change it because it taught me about resilience, unconditional love, and following my heart.
It showed me that promise, hope and wonder and true love do exist. It showed me that things may not always happen the way that you dream or think they will.
But in the end sometimes those things that change right before our eyes change because they’re supposed to. There is beauty in those changes and I am forever thankful for mine.
Angela Boucher is an adoptive mother.
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