The Bostons: From left, Jaleel, Angela, Mekhi, Anali and Heath.

Angela Boston says she finally feels like she is a mother.

The Ypsilanti Township woman is happily married to her husband, Heath Boston, and has played the role of mother to his now 16-year-old son, Jaleel, who is from a previous marriage, for the last 12 years.

Now she's celebrating her first Mother's Day after adopting two children who came into the family as foster children, and the family hopes to add another child to their family soon.

Almost suddenly, Angela and Heath have a full family. Angela said she appreciated that Jaleel and Heath previously acknowledged Mother’s Day, but called this one a little more special.

“Before I felt like ‘I’m not really a mother,’ but now, I’m a mother. Now I feel it,” she said.

The couple married in 2004 and wanted children together, only to discover Angela was unable to conceive. They tried adoption, but that ended in a painful situation in which the birth mother took the baby back amid kidnapping accusations.

Angela  said she began growing depressed about not having children, but at the urging of Michigan Department of Human Services case workers, the couple considered foster parenting. 

Within months, they had welcomed two infants from different drug-addicted parents into their home. A year later, one of the newborn’s siblings joined the family.

The Bostons provided one of 130 foster homes in Washtenaw County as of April.  In October 2010, 214 kids from infants to 18-year olds were placed in county foster homes, but officials at the DHS say the need for foster families is much greater, especially for children with disabilities or kids who are in their teens.

Greg Pordon, a foster home licensing specialist with the Washtenaw County Department of Human Services, said the Bostons provide a model foster home because of the “tremendous care they give to the children they have and are in the process of caring for.”

The couple have what Heath Boston described as a “fairytale relationship,” but said they knew several years ago they would be happier if they had more children.

Around 2007, the couple received a call from a family friend who knew of a pregnant 14-year-old interested in giving her child up for adoption. The Bostons went through the adoption process, but after having the child for two months the mother changed her mind, and Angela Boston said she was accused by the young mother’s family of kidnapping.

The Bostons gave the child back to the mother, and called the experience “devastating.”

“It was like losing a child,” Heath Boston said.

Angela  said healing from the loss took time.

“It just tore me up,” she said. “At first I was crying every minute, then every hour, then once a day, then once a month.”

The Bostons were so upset over what transpired that they moved from Ann Arbor to an Ypsilanti Township home “out in the sticks” to rebuild their lives.

Throughout the ordeal, social workers at the DHS came to like and trust the Bostons, Heath  said, and encouraged them to consider foster parenting. Reluctantly, and not expecting the idea to lead to anything, the Bostons submitted their paperwork with the DHS.

Then, in December 2008, the DHS called and told the couple of a newborn baby whose mother was a drug addict. The mother used drugs until seeking help at the start of the third trimester, but, despite the circumstances, the infant was healthy, and the Bostons welcomed the newborn boy, who they named Anali, into their home.

Two months later the DHS called again about another newborn. This one, they said, was in the hospital and had nowhere to go. Like before, this baby’s mother was a drug addict, but she continued to use and the boy was born addicted to drugs.

The Bostons visited the baby in the hospital and decided they would care for him.

As soon as she saw him in the hospital, suffering withdrawals, “I thought ‘Oh my God, he needs me,’” Angela said.

Since Anali had just outgrown all of his newborn clothes and items, the new boy, Mehki, was able to use them.

“Our household went from looking like a museum to looking like a Toys R Us almost overnight,” Heath said.

The family called Mekhi a “tremendous blessing," but he faced challenges from the outset,  requiring dosages of methadone. His withdrawal symptoms caused him to regularly vomit and cry. He was also lactose intolerant, meaning formula caused more stomach issues.

Following Mekhi’s arrival, Angela immediately traveled to Alabama for 10 days after her step-father passed away.

That left Heath  alone to care for two infants, one suffering from drug withdrawals.

“To see a child go through that - it’s an eye opening experience,” Heath said. “It’s very humbling. We didn’t know really what to expect and it was tough.”

But the experience proved fulfilling, and when Mehki’s sister was born a little over a year later to the same drug addicted mother, the Bostons took her in. The girl, whose name cannot be used because she is still has not been adopted, is nicknamed “Princess J” by the family.

In February, the Bostons adopted Anali and Mekhi. While the DHS says a child’s return to their birth family is the goal, that environment must be safe. The agency found neglect or abuse in about 22,000 of the 79,000 cases they investigated last year, and that led to about 8,000 kids placed in foster homes.

In the Bostons' case, the DHS determined the family was the safest place for Mehki.

In a unique twist, the Bostons keep in touch with Anali’s birth mother, who admitted she wasn’t in any condition to care for her child and willingly signed over Anali’s rights to the family.

But the Bostons didn’t want Anali’s birth mother out of his life, and agreed to keep in touch with her as long as she stayed clean. The mother, who Anali knows as K,  went from living a life of drug addiction to managing a McDonald’s.

Heath  calls her a good friend, and Angela  said she takes Anali to see his birth mother every couple weeks. Angela said she sees a “natural instinct bond” and thinks the arrangement is a good idea.

“We always wanted them to be in touch with the parents so we didn’t have the questions of ‘Who are they, why did they leave, what does she (my mom) look like?’” Angela said.

Heath  said all the kids in the home receive the same love, and Angela  said Jaleel has acted mature for his age and been helpful to the point that they sometimes order him not to take time off from his activities to keep helping them.

She described Anali as a daddy’s boy always wanting to play, while Mehki has needed to be held by his mother because of his sickness. Princess J earned the title “Princess," Angela joked, and the family is hoping to adopt her soon.

Angela said she is celebrating her first real Mother’s Day with the family by taking the kids to see “Thomas The Train.”

“One way I look at it is these children have come into world under such adverse conditions, so if they’ve been able to get through what they’ve gotten through, then there’s nothing that they can't get through when they get older,” Heath said. 

“The lesson they will learn is; ‘You guys had a pretty tough life before you even knew it, now you can do anything.’"