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. (if you aren’t home with your little one yet, describe some of your thought processes or plans!)
Our attachment went very smoothly. We read the book Adoption Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections by Jean MacLeod. It was a very good resource, but to be honest, we primarily relied on our instincts. I think the most important thing we did while waiting for Jacob was prayer.
We started immediately. As I wrote earlier, just a few minutes after we met Jacob, his daddy fed him. It was beautiful, Jacob gazed into his daddy's eyes while he took his bottle (he was 9 months old). We spent most of the next 3 days in our hotel room playing, kissing and doing lots of touching. For the first day Jacob was very sad, but he allowed us to interact with him.
When we returned home, we stayed home with him seperately. I was home with him for the first two weeks while Daddy went back to work. On the third week I went back to work and he was with Daddy for a week. We alternated this way for the next six weeks. We didn't have the experience of Jacob preferring one of us over the other.
Here's where our story, gets a little complicated. We got home with Jacob in September and about a week later we got the official orders. Daddy was being deployed to Iraq. He left in early January. I was so very worried about this. Was Jacob's connection to his Daddy solid enough to withstand a physical seperation for almost a year?
When he initially left home he went to California for a month's training. Jacob and I traveled to California to spend about 5 days with Daddy just before he left for Iraq. No problem then, Jacob was thrilled to see his Daddy. In fact, during this time, he preferred being with Daddy over me. Well, thank God for Skype. Daddy was stationed on a base in Iraq, so he was able to call us over the computer every Saturday morning. Jacob was able to "see" his Daddy and talk to him (If you scroll down you can see a picutre of Jacob talking to his Daddy in my post "Last Summer, This Summer").
When Daddy returned in September (the same day we got home with Jacob a year before), Jacob went right to him! For the next two weeks, Jacob spent his days with Daddy. No problems, he and Daddy picked up right where they left off.
Jacob and Daddy his first morning home from Iraq! An AWESOME day!!
