This guest post is by Angela Boucher, an adoptive mother.
Just hours before my son was born I was asked the question, “How do I know you will love him?”
Most mothers going into labor would never be asked that question, but I am not what most people would consider to be a typical mother.
You see, I was a hopeful adoptive mother in waiting. I sat side by side with the strongest woman I have ever known, my son’s birthmother!
As I tried to process the range of emotions I was feeling, I wiped away tears from my face. I answered her question simply, ” I always have and I always will love him. ”
At that moment, just hours away from our son’s birth, the two of us shared something many people can never understand, the truest deepest unconditional love.
We held one another’s hands and talked about anything and everything. Growing up, I never would have imagined this would be how I would experience childbirth, but here I was nonetheless.
This was my story, her story, and most importantly, my son’s story.
Our empathy and understanding for one another was palpable. I had never felt so much understanding for another person’s heartache as I had in those hours.
She loved her child without limits just as I had, but our paths to this moment were vastly different. Yet we both shared a limitless love for him as he was about to enter the world.
Adoption has changed my life in ways that I am still discovering.
It’s a love that runs through my entire being.
I have learned that nothing in life, especially parenthood, is a right. Instead, it’s a gift—and it does not matter how it comes into one’s life.
There was a period of time in my life that was filled with heartache and darkness. I now understand that darkness. It was needed in order for me to understand just how blessed I am today.
Adoption taught me to never give up! I admit it was not at all what I had planned or dreamed of. Instead I now find each day is what dreams are made of!
In those hours prior to my son’s birth I learned so many life lessons. I witnessed first hand what true love was. I witnessed what true bravery in a person looked like.
I also learned about empathy and compassion. I came to realize that my son’s birthmother loved him as unconditionally as I did—that true love was what brought us together at that moment in time. And that it would bind us together forever.
That compassion and understanding would be unlike anything I would ever experience again.
I realized that our two separate paths had converged to bring us together there, in that hospital room, and neither of our souls would ever be the same again.
Our love for this baby would be our lifelong bond, but our paths would soon separate once again.
I have said it hundreds of times, but I never dreamed that this would be my story—that this would be how I experienced childbirth.
In the end it doesn’t matter how it happened.
I will always be eternally grateful to my son’s birthmother.
She gave me the gift of motherhood. Our bond was formed that day in that hospital room.
This was not my intended path to parenthood, but in the end it’s the only path I ever wanted.
Why you ask? Because I have the greatest joy in the world, my son!
Angela Boucher is an adoptive mother.
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