Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins’ memoir, “A Sick Life” is available now. (Santiago Felipe/Getty Images)
As far back as 2012, TLC’s Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins expressed her desire to expand her family through adoption. She told Larry King then that she hoped to adopt a child from Haiti. While that desire didn’t come to fruition she does have a baby boy from the U.S. named Chance.
The journey to finalizing an adoption was not an easy one for the R&B singer. Watkins hoped she would have met her son a few years ago. That’s when, as Watkins writes in her book, “A Sick Life,” she was promised a baby from a mother in her hometown of Des Moines, Iowa.
“I had brought everything and got his room together,” Watkins told People magazine Tuesday, Sept. 19. However, when the adoption was supposed to be finalized, “[the birth mother] stood my mom up at the lawyer’s office when it was time to sign papers. I was hurt.”
However, the wait was worth it for the former mother of one, and in 2016, she brought home a 9-month-old baby boy.
“I was so relieved because you love this person with all your heart — and to know that someone can still take him from you?” Watkins said of the finalized adoption that moved her to tears. “I couldn’t imagine. I was so relieved once that part was over.”
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T-Boz, who gave birth to daughter, Chase, in 2000, has been relieved about a few other things in her life. Having suffered from sickle-cell anemia since she was 7, the singer was once told she’d never have children. She beat those odds but nine years later, doctors discovered a noncancerous brain tumor that required surgical removal. It led to various complications and a lengthy recovery.
“To this day, the headaches are unbelievable,” she told People magazine in 2009. “My facial nerves jump, and I want my smile back. But if that’s all? No problemo. I fight to be here daily because I want to see Chase get married and have kids.”
Today, she has one more child, Chance, whom she calls “a blessing,” that she surely hopes to see grow up.
