Biggest Struggle

It seems that most adoptive parents have similar struggles when they bring their babies home. The biggest, of course, is attachment. That's something that all adoptive parents will deal with to varying degrees no matter what age their kids are when they come home, and all social workers & agencies do a good job preparing us for that struggle.

Other than attachment, my biggest worries were: Bath Time & The Car Seat

So, we prayed and prayed and prayed that those would be smooth transitions for him. And, guess what...they were not an issue at all!

The one thing that wasn't on my radar (that probably should have been) was sleep. I didn't even think that my 8-month old child wouldn't sleep, but Mr. Kad is not a fan of night time. Since the day we picked him up, he would wake up every hour for a little reassurance that we wouldn't leave him. This went on for the entire stay in Ethiopia and continued once we came home.

Don't get me wrong, I love any opportunity to spend time with my little man, but it was making for very tired parents after nearly three months! I have read more books & websites than I care to mention, but they all recommended "crying-it-out" for periods of time, and that just wasn't something that we felt comfortable with. After all, we want Kad to know that when he cries we're here for him. We just prayed and prayed that eventually he would understand that and feel better about sleeping through the night.

And then, this morning it happened. Mike and I both woke up at 5:30 am and said, "Did you get up with Kad last night?" And then we both said, "No..did you?"

HE ACTUALLY SLEPT ALL NIGHT!!! He would whimper every few hours but would put himself right back to sleep.

Please God, let this be the new normal around here!!

Here's a picture of him when we checked on him this morning (because yes, we had the standard "new-parent-panic" moment when we wanted to make sure he was still breathing):



Seriously..isn't he one of the cutest things you've ever seen?!?