A bizarre reality of adoption is that you are a foster parent to your own baby for several months. Even when the birthparents’ parental rights have terminated and there is nobody else who is seeking custody of the child, the adoptive parents are legally foster parents until the adoption is finalized. For us, this process took 5 months.

In the meantime, I started up a neighborhood “moms group” with several other new mothers and their babies. We swapped stories and ideas and muddled through the first few months of sleep-deprived parenthood together. I was a mother just like they were, but legally, I was just the foster parent.

A certificate of adoption is like a marriage license: it’s just a piece of paper, but that piece of paper represents a significant commitment. That piece of paper tells the world that two people have a significant bond. Receiving that piece of paper was very important to me. That certificate would tell the world that I was this child’s mother – not a foster parent but his forever mommy.

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It was a regular day when that piece of paper arrived. I put Nicholas down for his afternoon nap and checked the mail. I saw a large envelope with Clerk of Court in the return address. I opened the envelope and saw the piece of paper I had been waiting for – talk about anticlimactic! I called my husband and told him that it had arrived. I then celebrated with Nicholas when he woke up. Of course, he was oblivious to the significance.

We threw an adoption party the next weekend. I picked up a cake that said, “Nicholas is home for good” on it. We joked that the bakery probably thought Nicholas was an ex-con who had just been paroled. LOL Our families and many of our friends joined us in celebrating our now legally recognized family.