But it was.
Because it was the moment I became his mother.
Not when I gave birth.
Not when they placed him beside me the first time.
But when I turned around and chose him.
Brian left the hospital that day.
He didn’t come back that night.
He didn’t come the next morning.
My mother arrived instead.
She was crying before she even entered the room.
I thought she would ask what happened. I thought she would look afraid too.
But she walked straight to the baby, touched his little hand, and whispered:
“Oh, sweetheart… you look just like your mama.”
Those words healed something in me.
For the first time, someone looked at my son and saw a baby before anything else.
I named him Matthew.
When I finally left the hospital, the car seat was no longer empty.
Matthew was sleeping inside it, wrapped in a blue blanket that one of the nurses had found for him.
