We meet

(Cross-posted at Moral Outcry)

I am sitting in a hotel room with a sleeping newborn. The last 3 days have been such a whirlwind, I can’t think where to begin. So I’ll start with when I met my son in a hallway.

One of the things that plagued me the last few months was the fear of not bonding, not connecting with an adopted baby. What if I saw him and felt nothing? I wondered.

We spent the day in the delivery room with the birthfamily, alternately making conversation and just being. Around 6:30, we decided to grab a sandwich while C (our baby’s mom) slept. By the time we got back with our sandwiches, it was go time. We stood in the hallway, waiting to hear his first cry. And we waited. Finally, the chaos built and then he sang his birth song. Richy and I and Susan, the social worker, were just frozen in the hall, listening to him.

Several minutes later, they whisked him down the hall to the NICU, because he had some issues with his heart that needed to be monitored. We were standing in the hall with his birth grandmas and tried to snap a picture as he passed, when one of his grandmothers called out and stopped the nurses.

To my complete surprise, they stopped everything and put him in my arms. I don’t know if I’m skilled enough to explain what went through my head, my heart in those seconds.
Will I love him?
Oh.
You are mine, and I am yours.

In a span of seconds, my heart was captured. I don’t know how, or what or why God put it together this way. I just know they handed me a stranger and he was my flesh.