Deep down, I always knew that I would be a mom. I always loved kids. However, as I entered my mid-thirties, without the prospect of a husband, I thought that I would just have to settle for being an aunt. Then I met the man who became my husband. We were the office romance that worked. But that is a story for another blog. I was 35, almost 36, when we got married. We had plenty of time to be a couple before we would think about starting a family. When we did start to think about having kids, it wasn’t happening. There were ways that we could have chosen to have a family; certain medical procedures come to mind. Our choice seemed pretty easy for us. We chose adoption.

Yes, we had to go through a lot of hoops: classes; a home study; mounds of paperwork, meetings with attorneys; hiring adoption facilitators and visits from social workers. But the moment that I heard my son’s heartbeat for the first time on a doctor visit with his birth mom, I knew it was all worth it.

The moment that I held my son for the first time, minutes after he was born, my world view completely changed. It wasn’t just how fiercely I loved this little guy and how much I wanted to protect him from everything. I saw the world full of children whose mothers felt the same way I did. This included his birth mom who made the ultimate sacrifice in order for her son to have a better life than she could provide.

In those moments after his birth, I became a mom.