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.
One of my favorite topics. I did a good bit of research on attachment after adoption. This is one of my favorite resources.
This is a long article, but it really gave me some great perspective.
We wrote a letter to our family when we were travelling outlining some of our boundaries and what we thought would help us bond best with Sophie. For the most part, our wishes were respected. We had an incident or two that I still struggle with internally. I am working out our plan for our return from Ethiopia, but I imagine the boundaries will be very similar. For some people, this would be way too strict and not "fun". We have received some flack, but I feel like our obligation is to our children not to the people who want to hold a baby. Here are a few of our requests.
- No overnight guests for family visiting out of town. We wanted it to be clear who her immediate family was - we had some trouble with this one.
- Dan and I would be the only ones to hold Sophie - this lasted for a few weeks
- We would be the only ones to feed her a bottle - there were only a few exceptions for awhile on that one.
- If Sophie wanted someone else to hold her, we asked that people lovingly directed her back to us. I don't think that ever happened, so it wasn't an issue.
- We also explained that while Sophie was 14 months when we travelled to bring her home we would still be giving her bottles to promote attachment.
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