How did attachment go during your first year? Describe what you did to prepare for attachment as well as the joys and challenges of attachment during your first year home.
A friend of mine who has adopted her two children domestically warned me that bonding with our baby might be a challenge. She encouraged me to let Cate sleep close to us, like in a bassinet beside our bed. Until that conversation with her a few weeks before Cate was born, I hadn't even considered not bonding with my baby.
Sure, I wasn't physically birthing this baby, but I had all the peace that the birth mother was carrying a baby for us. That's even how she talked. It's what I knew in my hard, even though a couple people tried to instill fear in me.
After Cate was born and the nurses took care of her immediate needs in the nursery, a sweet nurse brought her to me at 4 a.m. I fed her and held her for three straight hours. Greg was trying to sleep. But I was falling in love with the little person who was going to change our family in more good ways than I can ever begin to count.
I guess I should say: We bonded.
And we haven't stopped bonding since.
We spent the first week of her life in a hotel in southern Indiana waiting for the green light for state governments to go home. That was a bonding experience in itself. Cate slept in a travel bassinet near our hotel bed. Then when we got home, she spent a night, maybe two, in the bassinet in our room. We decided we'd all probably sleep better if we had our own space. So she went to her crib, and that's where she's slept since. We're just down the hall so we can hear her, but my baby likes her sleep as much as we do.
Cate is almost 15 months old, and bonding hasn't been a challenge. Of course, she hasn't known any other caregivers. We were there when she's born and she's been with us since.
How's that for not really having an answer to the Blog Buzz question?!
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