Let’s Hear it For the Boys

The forgotten half of the adoption-hood.

I feel like guys kinda get left out of the adoption-hood. I feel like all the fuss is over the women in adoption-hood, when really a lot of it should be on the fellas. In my birth momma story there is focus on both, but in very different ways.

As a woman, I see the role a mother plays in the raising of a child. And as I was facing that role alone, I became very keenly aware of the role a man plays as a father. That absence was so tangible and heartbreaking that I knew I could not ask my little guy to go through it. And I knew the perfect guy was out there waiting for the privilege to do the job.

My little guy’s adoptive dad is the coolest dad I know. He is the epitome of dad. He can fix and build anything. He is silly and fun and sweet. He does all the crazy stuff an adult shouldn’t do, that a dad should do. With everything he is as a dad, I can only image what he is as a husband. And that is where it all has to start.

I am now married and gearing my life toward mommy land. And let me be the first to say, I have the best husband. He came into the picture just a few years into my birth-parenthood and has loved my little guy from the beginning and embraced his co-birthparent-hood status. I can’t wait for the amazingness that will come when we become parents together. Parenthood scares the crap out of me.  It sounds impossible just the regular way–I can’t imagine the road down the adoption trail. As my own personal fear of secondary infertility looms in the background, I ask myself if I have what it would take to get through it.

First and foremost, I would need to have one heck of guy. All the great wonderful attributes that a man can possibly have, it would take every single one of those to keep me together. That thought right there turns my thoughts about adoption to the other half of the adoption-hood. To the men that get us through it, to the men that hold us together. Thank you for being the dads and husbands that only you can be.