Things really hadn’t been going well for Samantha at this point in time. Her relationship with her unborn baby’s father had been a bad one and had left its scars. So, even though she loved the child growing inside her, she knew she couldn’t look after her when the time came. During the earlier stages of her pregnancy, Samantha decided to spend some time with her mom who lived in Arkansas. Samantha wasn’t in a good headspace at the time, which her mother noticed.
Her mom suggested that she could look after her daughter’s baby when it was born, but Samantha didn’t think it would be a good idea. So, the path forward wasn’t at all clear for Samantha. She just didn’t know how she was going to deal with this baby when it arrived. It was a stressful, grim time, and there didn’t appear to be any easy solutions on the horizon. Fortunately, though, an unexpected meeting would quickly change everything for the better.
It was during a flight to North Carolina that Samantha first met Temple. Neither woman was meant to be on this particular flight, yet luck or fate, depending on how you look at it, intervened and brought them together. The two ladies got chatting, which led to the most unlikely development. Samantha herself has written about this remarkable period of her life on the website Love What Matters. Taking us to the start of the story, she recalled, “Let’s roll back time to 2016 when I was 24 years old.
I found myself pregnant by a man who I’d already been planning to leave.” Samantha explained that the relationship with the father of the unborn child had been really rough, but with the news of her pregnancy, she became excited by the prospect of starting a family. She gave an ultimatum to the father, saying he needed to change if they were to stay together and bring up their kid. Sadly though, things just didn’t change. Samantha’s relationship with this man remained terrible, if anything getting actually worse.
She knew she needed to get out of it and soon left him for good. And with no other options, went to stay with her mom in Arkansas. This wasn’t a pleasant period for Samantha either. “I was now living with my mother and her girlfriend in Arkansas. I felt completely disconnected and lost,” she revealed.
“I didn’t feel worthy of bringing a child into this world or trying to care for him or her when I was still trying to learn how to love myself again.” So, Samantha knew she couldn’t raise her child once it arrived. But when her mom offered to look after the baby, she was also uncomfortable with that too. She didn’t think it was a good idea. She felt her mother’s life wasn’t particularly in great shape either.
Her choices were really limited. Samantha had slipped into a deep depression by this time, an understandable response to her situation. She felt like there were no right answers here, which must have been incredibly upsetting. But little did she know at the time that a way out of this nightmare was just around the corner. Looking back on the period when things started to change, Samantha wrote, “It all began when I started talking to a guy via the Internet over a game called League of Legends.
I’d been playing video games since I was 15 years old. It was my escape from a life I didn’t feel like I belonged in and definitely didn’t like. Playing online, I was exposed to various types of people. I felt accepted. My home away from home.
Samantha continued, “The light at the end of the tunnel wasn’t apparent to me, but unknowingly, I set in motion a chain of events that eventually secured the future of my child and still allowed me to see him grow up through our online gaming.” Samantha ended up chatting a lot with a guy from North Carolina. Despite the distance, they started to really get to know each other over the course of a few months. She grew to really like this guy from the internet. But before she knew it, she was just weeks away from her due date.
Samantha fondly recalled the time she spent chatting to this man online. “There was something about this guy because even though I was eight months pregnant, he wanted to meet me,” she explained. “He wanted to see if there was any fiber to our friendship that we could build a relationship on.” The guy begged Samantha to visit him, but she wasn’t so sure. She was heavily pregnant, remember, so traveling a long distance was a little more complicated than it would have been normally.
Still, she wanted to go and eventually decided to take a leap of faith and make the journey. But things wouldn’t go to plan. Samantha struggled to maneuver through the airport, so she actually failed to make her flight. It must have felt like an absolute disaster, particularly in light of how badly things had been going for her. Lightly bizarrely though, missing her plane turned out to be the best thing that could have happened.
“This is where the light starts to radiate,” Samantha recounted. “Because I missed the connecting flight, my boyfriend made a few calls and got me the next available spot on standby. After a little time passing, a seat opened up for me. An employee came with a wheelchair to get me to the boarding gate, and now I was on my way.” Samantha was given a seat on the plane beside a lady who seemed to be really nice and positive.
They started chatting right away, which led to an instant friendship. Even though Samantha had been feeling anxious getting on that flight, she was being put at ease by this woman, whose name was Temple. “We’d only been an hour together, but I felt as if we’d been friends for years,” Samantha admitted. Throughout the conversation, she learned that she was looking for a suitable parent for her child and it would probably end up being her mother, even though she had some reservations against it. The conversation went both ways, and Samantha learned a bit about Temple too.
She turned out had always wanted kids of her own, but things had never worked out that way. The two women enjoyed their chat and carried on talking after the plane had landed. Temple helped the pregnant lady do her makeup and tried to instill some confidence in Samantha before she met her digital boyfriend for the first time. Writing about Temple, Samantha said, “She was such a great person. She waited with me to make sure I was safe.
She knew I didn’t know anyone else in the area, and before we parted ways, she gave me her number. She told me to call should I ever find myself in trouble, in need of anything, or if I wanted to talk more about adoption.” So, Samantha went to meet her boyfriend, and things went well initially. They spent the next few days together, but then events took quite a turn. Samantha unexpectedly went into labor.
Terrified, she realized she was going to give birth away from home in North Carolina. This wasn’t how things were meant to go. By the time Samantha had been brought to the hospital, she was in a panic, naturally. Thankfully, a midwife talked her down and convinced her that she could do this. She told Samantha, “You can push easily for hours, so you can push with all you have and get it over with.
And sure enough, a quick labor followed, and Samantha had given birth to a baby boy. In the wake of the birth, Samantha felt a connection with the baby, but she still knew she wasn’t meant to raise him. This made her feel very lonely, particularly as her new boyfriend had been forced to leave her side so he could go to work. She was feeling stuck again, and that wasn’t helped by a phone call with her mom. Her mother still wanted to look after the baby, but Samantha thought it was a terrible idea.
Things looked hopeless, but then Samantha was struck by a brainwave. She remembered Temple, the nice lady from the plane, had left her number. So, Samantha called and asked if she’d come visit her and the newborn boy, and Temple accepted. When she arrived, she was again extremely kind and helpful. Samantha asked Temple if she’d like to feed the baby, which she was more than happy to.
She was though nervous when it came down to it, even trembling a little. But it soon became clear she and the child were developing an instant bond. Samantha watched it all happen in real-time, though Temple had been a total stranger only days before. And now, it became clear to Samantha that this woman should be the one to raise her baby. She felt it so strongly, and she didn’t hold back on expressing it.
She asked Temple straight out if she’d like to adopt the baby boy. Temple was obviously shocked, but she soon realized she wanted to do it. She said yes, and before long, all the legal details were worked out. Thanks to a chance encounter on a plane, Temple had now become a mom, and Samantha had found the perfect person to look after her baby. It all worked out perfectly.
On top of that, Samantha’s relationship with her new boyfriend continued to flourish too, and they ended up staying together. Perhaps the best thing for Samantha is that she and Temple have remained close, so that means she even gets to see the boy she gave birth to grow up. Things that seemed so grim, but out of nowhere, everything fell into place. Samantha, Temple, and the baby boy all got a happy ending.
