Bonding

Not sure where the last two weeks went since the last post, but May is here already! We have had a busy couple of weeks with meetings at our adoption agency, visiting Danielle, and just trying to keep up with things around the house--quite a lot considering how busy Kyla keeps us! At any rate, here are a few photos from the last two weeks.

I've been wanting to address a question someone asked me recently. (We like questions, and I hope to talk about more of them here so that the entire adoption process is more understood!) I was talking with a friend and she asked if we had any difficulty bonding with Kyla--an honest question that I think others may have. I'm sure at one point when considering adoption we probably thought about that too. Considering how fast everything happened for us, it's easy to think that it might take a while to bond with her. And in any adoption, given that you don't have the 9 months while the baby is growing inside you, watching him/her on the sonogram, and feeling the baby kick, it's only natural to wonder how you might bond with the baby when he/she arrives.

For us, our bonding started during the 2 1/2 years we were trying to conceive as we prayed for the life we believed God would bring us someday (which He did in His own wonderful way!). We bonded as we imagined what it would be like to care for our baby, as we dreamed of decorating a nursery, as we thought of all the fun things we'd get to do with a child, like taking him/her to the zoo and watching him/her ride a bike for the first time. Then, a bit more concretely, we began bonding specifically with Kyla from the moment we met Danielle, the birthmom, through the next few weeks as we registered for baby items, painted the nursery, and jumped at every phone call wondering if Danielle was calling to say she was in labor. And the moment we laid eyes on Kyla at the hospital, our hearts were completely captured. It was so difficult to tear our eyes away from that nursery window or give her back to the nurses while we got some much-needed sleep.


So I would say we have not had any difficulty bonding with her. We just bonded over a much shorter time frame than the typical parent. I don't want to imply this is the case in all adoptions (nor, as I've read, is it always the case with biological parents who may not instantly connect with their newborn), but this was our experience. Hope this sheds a little light on the subject!