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It’s Him
Henry Amador-Batten, Durham, NC
From Dads Behaving DADLY 2: 72 More Truths, Tears, and Triumphs of Modern Fatherhood Copyright © 2015 Motivational Press. Reprinted with permission. By Hogan Hilling and Al Watts.
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I can still, so vividly, remember the day I received the photo.
It came via text message. I emailed it to myself in order to get a larger look.
I opened the image and looked at it with a mixture of amazement, fear, and disbelief.
A few moments later I shared it with my husband.
“Look what she sent me,” I said, “a sonogram photo.”
“It’s him.”
We both spent a few silent moments gazing at the image.
We had not even met the woman on the other end of the text. I had only exchanged a few polite messages with her up to that point.
An acquaintance of ours was related to this young woman. She knew we had been trying to grow our family and she knew her sister had not wanted to grow hers.
Rather than play the middleman, she asked her sister if she could give us her number, to which, she agreed.
I sat with that number for nearly a full day.
You would have thought I would have jumped on it, but I didn’t, I sat. What would I say to her? I heard you wanted to give up your baby?
What a tiny approach to such a giant thought.
Do I bring up the fact that we were two married men now?
What if that crushes our hopes? What if that idea is unacceptable to her?
I was so consumed by all the questions that I just sat there, frozen and fearful, two adjectives I would have never used to describe myself before that day. But this situation, this opportunity, had the potential of shaking all the leaves from my tree.
If it worked out, my life—our lives—would never be the same. And it was that truth that turned me into a scared, still man.
I eventually mustered up the nerve to text her. I introduced myself, took a shot at a sincere attempt at understanding this difficult decision and thanked her for considering us. She responded quickly, and after a few exchanges asked when we would like to get together.
Thank God the ice was broken.
I suddenly felt safe behind my phone and asked if it could be soon. It had dawned on me that if this was going to happen, we would have to be proactive and quick. I already knew she had tried to abort this child, but she was too far along. I also knew she had reached out to an adoption agency.
If we were going to have a chance at convincing her we would be the perfect family for her unborn baby, we would have very little time to waste. We agreed to meet at a coffee house the next afternoon.
“Would you like to see a picture of recent sonogram photo?” she texted next.
I said yes.
And there we were, my husband and I, looking at this little forming stranger who suddenly entered our lives like a cold rush of air through a crack in a window.
In the privacy of our home, without having yet met the woman carrying him, we were looking at his photo.
I asked my husband how he felt. He seemed thoughtful and quiet and said he wasn’t sure.
What if this is the first time we are looking at our son? We both wondered.
What if this is the first of our one million photos of him?
Shouldn’t we be excited?
Happy?
Should we tell anybody?
Should we forward this picture to your mother?
What if she is going to be a grandmother?
Truthfully, we weren’t happy. We were too afraid to embrace the happiness.
We didn’t share the news. As a matter of fact, there were many people in our circle who knew nothing until the day we brought that five-pound baby boy home from the hospital.
There were so many variables, so many what-ifs between the moment of possibility and the lofty, far away idea of him actually being ours.
What if we can’t afford the adoption?
What if she doesn’t like us?
What if she changes her mind?
What if, God forbid, something happens to the baby?
What if … what if … what if …?
We were so lost in the uncertainties that we lost sight of the dream, our dream.
On that amazing day, we were indeed looking into our baby’s face for the very first time.
He soon would be ours! He is ours!
And out of all the millions of pictures we will take of our beautiful boy, this first photo, our first photo, will always mean more than you could possibly understand.
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Henry Amador-Batten lives in Durham, North Carolina and is a strong advocate for the LGBTQ community. He lives with his husband and their three-year-old son. He and his husband were the first same-sex couple to jointly adopt a child in Broward County Florida — setting legal precedence. He is a certified Holistic Life Coach and specializes in teaching advanced life skills. Henry is also the founding mind behind parenting blog, DADsquared, and has developed it into an amazing resource and support destination for gay dads and dads to be. Learn more at www.dadsquared.org.
Hogan Hilling is a nationally recognized and OPRAH approved author of 12 published books. Hilling has appeared on Oprah. He is the creator of the DADLY book series and the “#WeLoveDads” and “#WeLoveMoms” Campaigns, which he will launch in early 2018. He is also the owner of Dad Marketing, a first of its kind consultation firm on how to market to dads. He is also the founder of United We Parent. Hilling is also the author of the DADLY book series and first of its kind books. The first book is about marketing to dads “DADLY Dollar$” and two coffee table books that feature dads and moms. “DADLY Dads: Parents of the 21st Century” and “Amazing Moms: Parents of the 21st Century.” Hilling is the father of three children and lives in southern California.
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Originally published in Dads Behaving DADLY 2: 72 More Truths, Tears, and Triumphs of Modern Fatherhood Copyright © 2015 Motivational Press. Reprinted with permission.
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Photo credit: Getty Images
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