But, will I love them?

"Adoption is a miracle. I don't mean just that it's amazing, terrific, and a wonderful thing to do. I mean that it is, that as the dictionary says, "a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by nature or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of divine agency."                                                              
                                                                         -Scott Simon, Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other


One of the things non-adoptive parents say to me a lot is "I just don't think I could love a child that isn't mine."

I honestly have no idea how many times someone has said this to me. It's been so many times I couldn't possibly remember them all. Even while we were waiting to be matched with Max the x-ray tech at my doctor's office said to me "I'm interested in adoption, but my wife doesn't think she'd love someone else's kid like she loves ours."

Loving someone else's child fully and unconditionally doesn't make sense to our tiny human minds. We want a child that's ours. We want to see the similarities between them and us, to connect with them the way our parents connected with us.

But here's the thing- Max is mine.

I couldn't love that little boy more had Dan and I created him ourselves. He is so much a part of me that there are moments when I forget I didn't give birth to him. I have dreams that I breastfeed him, not because it's something that's a part of our everyday lives (he's been exclusively bottle-fed), but because it is so innate between mother and child that my mind forgets he didn't come from my body

 Our hearts are extraordinary. Just as the love biological parents have for one child, two children, however many children they may have, grows, so does the love for adopted children.

Love is one of those amazing, limitless things. The more places to pour it out, the more it flows.