My Journey Into Motherhood...

Motherhood.

A word that just a little under two years ago, I knew only the basics about.

The cooking and cleaning. Doctors appointments and nightly kisses before bed. The things we know all good mothers do.

What I didn't know, was the bond that came with it. The pride in everything your child learns. The innocence of a tiny hand reaching out to hold your own. The feeling when you were given your first kiss by them.

These were things I knew nothing of the true meaning.

Not until after the separation of my husband and I in October of 2018. Due to my own stupidity and wondrous thoughts, the man I had been with since I was fifteen years old, and spent every moment with for the last eight and a half years, wasn't in my life for over a year. We didn't speak once. The entire year of 2019 felt like a blur, like it didn't even happen.

In that time, I saw other people, and he was in a steady relationship. After some time had past, and I had come to the realization I was stupid, pushed people away, had made horrible decisions, and thought I wanted to be alone, he reached out to me. We spent some days texting back and forth, where he informed me he was no longer in a relationship with the girl we both knew, but that he was expecting a daughter.

In February 2020, he invited me to his house one night for chicken on the grill. We ate and talked. We have always been close, even when far apart, so it wasn't surprising when we fell back into each other so quickly. I left that night knowing I wanted to come back and never leave again, and eventually that is what happened.

As we grew closer and our relationship had grown stronger than it had been before, we often discussed how he would be expecting his daughter within three to four months. He was left with very little information on the subject of his daughters birth, but he did finally get to meet her when she was just over five months old. I remember all the planning, all the prepping of her bedroom, crib, and clothes. It made me so happy that he was going to have his daughter home with him where she belonged. We easily spent those months prepping her room, the house, our vehicles, in suspense for her arrival.

I'll never forget the day we met her. Both of us, together. I had been so excited for my husband, Jason, to rightfully get to be with his daughter, that I hadn't thought about the overwhelming sense of joy I would get when first laying eyes on her in that gas station parking lot.

With her perfect white bow on her bald little baby head, held tightly in the arms of a foster mother, that I could tell in that moment, had loved Raven like her own, and still does. That grungy little gas station parking lot seemed like a little piece of paradise for a moment.

Jason was allowed to pick her up that day, and have her for three or four hours. Honestly I can't quite remember exactly how much time he was given. All I remember is us riding right home and sitting on the couch while he held her and we just stared at her in amazement for some time. My mother and Jason have always been close, so we brought Raven to meet my mom, at Jason's request. *happy tears*

Seven days later, we were allowed to bring her home for good. The week in between seemed to drag on forever. There was this feeling of emptiness in our home that wasn't there before. I couldn't stop fidgeting or get comfortable anywhere that I needed to be. All of that stopped when we picked her up a week later. We brought her home that day to be the family she deserved. Foster mommy had placed her back into the pink frilly top we changed her into the day we got to meet her, which I keep in a chest with other keepsakes. As I slipped into the back seat to be next to her on the car ride home, she looked at me with so much love, and wonder, and innocence in her bright and bubbly blue eyes.

I couldn't help but take a picture. I call it "The Car Ride".

It took me some time, maybe even weeks after having her home to realize, that the sense I was feeling in the months leading up to her arrival, and the anxiety the entire week in between meeting her and bringing her home, up to that moment in the car, was motherhood.

Not everyone's journey into motherhood is getting pregnant and birthing a child, and that's okay. I've not once looked at myself any different than any other mother during the time with my daughter. Being that Jason and I were married, and I knew I wanted to adopt as her mother, everything in court went relatively smooth. The bond I have with Raven would be the same had I birthed her myself, and I didn't.

She will know that. I never plan to bend the story to her on how I became her mother, but I did. She will always be my baby.

It isn't about whether or not the child belongs to you.

It's about you belonging to the child.