Tips For Bonding With Your Adopted Infant
Posted on: 11 January 2016
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Adopting a baby is a fantastic thing to do because it allows you to give a child that might have had a rough life a chance to have an easier life. It also allows you to bring a new person into your family so that you can share your love even further. However, if you are adopting a newborn baby, you might have some worries about bonding with him or her right away. If you feel that you are experiencing issues bonding with your newborn baby, do not be alarmed. This is a common phenomenon that many adoptive parents experience. Here are some tips to make the bonding process go more easily.
1. Keep the Baby Near You While You Sleep
If possible, for the first few months that you have your newborn, adopted baby, try keeping him or her in the same room as you while you are sleeping. This has two effects. First, it allows you to be close to the baby for more time than you would perhaps be otherwise, aiding in the process of bonding. Second, it allows you to respond to your baby's nighttime needs at a moment's notice. This saves you the stress and time of walking all the way over to the baby's room and soothing him or her and makes the soothing process much easier, reducing your stress. It also gets you in the habit of responding to your baby's needs. According to researchers, knowing when your child needs something, feeling confident about responding to that need, and actually getting the need met is one of the main signs that a bond or attachment has successfully formed.
2. Have a Two-Sided Conversation
Another action that you can try is to talk to your baby throughout the day. Not only is this important for a child's normal language development, but it also gives you a chance to interact with your child even when you cannot be physically holding him or her. Be sure to make the conversations as two sided as possible and pause in between sentences so that your baby has a chance to make noise.
3. Don't Stress About Breastfeeding
Finally, make sure that you don't stress about not being able to breastfeed. Sometimes mothers are able to time adopting a child so that they are able to continue lactating when they finally get the baby. Other times, lactating is able to be induced medically. This is one way to feed your adopted baby but it is not the only viable way. If you don't want to worry about pumping or going through medications to get yourself to lactate, don't worry about it. Formula is not going to harm the bond between you and your adopted infant. Simply spending time calmly feeding your baby in any manner is going to help the bond form.
For more information, talk to a company that specializes in baby adoption.