Sleeping with a stranger- or a return to babydom

Adoptive parents of children that are older (by older, I mean not a young baby) may well, like me, come to parenting with no experience of  babydom, the all absorption of parenthood, the skin to skin contact and the feelings of utter connection (because I don't actually know first hand, I take this from friends who have had babies). We may come to parenthood of our toddlers with a total disconnection of what being a parent is- we come at it through theory, some childcare experience (we helped out at Beavers and i am a teacher) and we read.

Some of us may have nieces and nephews, be exceedingly close to a friend's baby or know some baby in a more connected and intimate way. I would hazard a guess that many of us don't.

And this is okay really- a majority of birth parents come to their with no prior experience and none of them have been though intensive questioning and appraisal of peers to be a parent.

But- and here is the real lesson- we miss out on the crucial bonding stage of babydom- no shared baths and beds, no naked cuddles, no breast or bottle feeding and so we come to parenthood with a want to be connected in the same way but actually being totally disconnected to our children to begin with.

We listen to the advice of the SW of the child, the family finder, those in the know at the LA. We listen to the FC and the routines, the likes and dislikes, down to the washing powder they use. We take this all on and copy it to help the transition.

Here are our mistakes (well some of so many on this steep learning curve),

1- They must sleep in the same room because they do at the FC.

So we did this. They seemed to hate it. Would not share a story, books would get thrown about in the night, as would soft toys, jealous who the other sibling having the other parent by their side at night, one would scream and when asleep the other would wake them up ,both would wake up bleary eyed and tired.

2. They have no light in their room , only the bathroom light on

Nightlights have been essential- they demanded doors open, hall light on...

3. They go straight to bed with a simple good night and sleep though

They most certainly do not sleep straight away, continuous call backs.

We separated them into separate rooms after a few months. Watson continued to go to sleep quickly, only needing cuddles and kisses from both before settling.

Holmes, however, will not settle. We tried to keep up the routine despite it feeling wrong, trying sitting outside the room, timing the good nights and then me staying in the room until he slept. This worked for a while and them just wasn't enough for him.

Bedtimes were taking up to two hours.

I decided to try to go back to basics- thinking about the co sleeping one of my good friends does with her baby, moving him slowly to sleeping without her...my 'baby' clearly wants the attention. We have missed all the skin to skin- over a year on, it now feels appropriate to be that close, now we know each other and now we have bonded. We have done so much together and all of the initial fears of my little stranger in my home have gone- so it felt like time to go back to basics.

So we moved him into a single bed (I literally could do no more learning over a toddler bed, my back couldn't take it) . I decided to try sleeping with him to get him to sleep.

It is slowly getting better. we have a strange mix of  'me hate you. go away' and 'you're horrible' (We strongly suspect issues at night/ being sent to his room/ potential fear of contact in his room) and him wanting to cuddle close. Slowly the hate is getting less and the cuddling more (outside of his room, he is a very cuddly and loving little boy).

I am hopeful that thing will improve, I expect set backs but hope for a closer more comforting bedtime for him. We have had several settled nights now where he accepts his 'baby cuddle' and goes to sleep with little to no fuss.

I regret not going for this option sooner, thinking he was 'too old' for baby style sleeping, I regret trying to follow someone else's way of putting them to bed and I regret not realising how much fear there is connected to his bedtime because we listened to the line that a;; was fine and they always slept well.

I can only hope that this is attention needing being met and not a sticking plaster that will be ripped off and the wound of fearful sleep re-opened.

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