Loving someone else's child

Adoption is a topic of many of my conversations as my husband and I have recently adopted a baby boy, David Zachary. Something I hear very often is, "I cannot love somebody else's child." 

David at almost three weeks old, on the day I took him from the hospital to the children's home.

I agree. I have several good friends whose children I have come to love and enjoy over the years. However, they are not my own children and I will most probably never feel about them as I do about my own. 

I photograph a lot of babies and children and I thoroughly love it. I enjoy them so much. They climb up into my lap and I play with them and cuddle and kiss them and I'm in heaven. But they are not my children and what I feel for them is fondness. I totally get not loving somebody else's child as my own.

David two days after he came home. He was almost four weeks old.

The thing is that David is not somebody else's child. He is mine. In June 2013 when my husband and I knew we wanted to adopt we started to think about our unborn son as just that, our son. 

We did not know when we would get a baby boy but we started to prepare. We got some clothes, nappies, wipes, wipes and even more wipes and I made linen for his cot. We spoke about him often and chose names. Whenever I had a quiet moment I would think about him. I wondered all the same things that I did while I was pregnant with my daughters. I wondered what he would look like, what kind of little person he would be, when he would arrive. In my heart I was pregnant, I was just not carrying him in my womb. (Thank goodness, pregnancy is tough!)

At four months old playing on our bed with his big, big sister who adores him.

So we love and adore David just like we do our biological children. I scored in that I did not have to carry him in my womb, endure mind numbing fatigue, nausea like no other, swollen feet, having to wee every ten minutes and then the unmentionable pain of giving birth. David is our son, no one else's and it is easy loving him.

Five months old and learning to sit. He can stay upright for a moment or two before he topples over. Aren't those the most industrial eyebrows you've ever seen?