A little over seven years ago, I found out that my boyfriend was expecting a child with someone else. Needless to say, I was devastated, and at first I just wanted to walk away from the situation. After talking with both of them for hours, I realized that my boyfriend and I could work through this and also that this girl needed my help. She was not in a situation to take care of a baby. This baby needed me.

The first time that I held that baby in my arms, I realized that he was meant for me, that being his mother was my purpose in life. The first few months of his life, we had him about half of the time, and by the time he was ten months old he was living with us all of the time. When he was fifteen months old, his birth mother decided that she was not in a place in her life to care for a baby, so she gave us custody. Although he had lived with us most of his life, the day the papers were signed was the happiest day of my life. He was finally, legally where he belonged, with the people who loved him more than anything else in the world.

From the beginning, he and I have shared a bond like no other. I remember rocking him all night long when he was ill and realizing that I was totally and completely in love with this precious baby boy. Each and every milestone in his life was, and still is, a complete miracle to me. When he said his first word, "mom," I thought that he had more intelligence than Einstein. When he took his first step, I was prouder than if he had been the first man to walk on the moon. Every smile, every hug, was a blessing straight from God.

His first day of kindergarten was very emotional. Regardless of whether he was ready or not, I wasn't sure that I was. He was not a baby anymore, and I couldn't protect him from everything in life. I only hoped that I had prepared him to stand on his own and to make the right decisions.

He is now a happy, healthy little person who possesses all of the wisdom and knowledge of a first grader. He has his own friends and his own interests. He can read and write, add and subtract, and he is very proud of the fact that he chases girls at recess. Girls at recess already? He wouldn't think of wearing anything other than baggy jeans because he has to be "cool," and I now have to be careful not to kiss him in front of his friends. He is kind, compassionate, well-mannered, and loving. Best of all, he still crawls up on my lap for a story or just some cuddle time (as long as his friends aren't around). Even though he can be mischievous, ornery, devilish, and just plain rude, I think that he is perfect and wouldn't have him any other way.

Not long ago, after a weekend visit with his birth mother, he came home a little sad and looking confused. When I asked him what was wrong, he said, "Mindy (his birth mother) said that I wasn't in your tummy so you're not my real mom you're just my stepmother." I was crushed. I had never thought of myself as "just his stepmother," and I was not prepared for this at all. I hugged and kissed my baby and told him that Mindy was right, that he wasn't in my tummy but that he was in a much more important place: he was in my heart. He gave me that smile of his and said, "I am so glad because you're the best mom in the whole wide world."