3 week step back

I don't often write about our struggles here, but I need to. Adoption isn't all roses, there is a lot of hard work involved in helping your new child attach and bond with you. There are struggles that you face that parents of newborns do not, but many of them are the same.

For one thing, we've been lucky that Katie has been sleeping through the night. It seems most of the kids go through some sleep issues and wake up a lot. Unlike when you have a biological child, we can not let Katie cry it out. It's not healthy for her because she does not know that we will always be there for her. She needs us to go in and pick her up, to love on her, to help her get back to sleep. While we don't have issues with Katie staying asleep, getting her to go to sleep has been rough lately. She just doesn't want to go to sleep. It takes a good 30 minutes or so to get her to the point we can lay her down. We learned, quickly, that if she falls asleep prior to being laid down in the crib she will wake up and cry. If we lay her down still awake but almost asleep, then if she wakes up in the middle of the night she doesn't cry and will go back to sleep.

Today? She's started having nightmares. We think, due in part to a rather traumatic experience yesterday at the doctor's office. It took 3 tries to get the blood drawn for various tests. I was holding her (on the doctor's recommendation after seeing us together and how attached Katie was to me). We are comforting her, but it feels like we've taken multiple steps back.

Another thing that has been very hard is how clingy Katie has been since right after Christmas. Dh went to work, and she was not sure what was going on. Things changed. She did start attaching to me, but she was anxiously attached. Which means I had to hold her as long as she was awake. This puts a great damper on going to the bathroom. It means no showers. It makes fixing dinner harder. I do have an Ergo carrier which helps, but there are times I need to be able to put her down. There was a time it had been over 3 days since I had a shower. Why? Because I couldn't leave Katie in her crib to take one in the morning (I don't get up before her and Dh is already gone for work when she wakes up...and NO I am not getting up with him). ;) Remember the Cry It Out? Can't do that...so no crib. Same reason we can't do the pack and play...although it could be in our room (just not close enough to the shower for her to be able to SEE me). Our bathroom is too small to put it in there...or anything like a supersaucer. That adjustment was tough on me, but Katie didn't seem to mind. ;)

Juggling 3 kids' schedules has been harder than I imagined it would be. Doctor's appointments (and we had orthodontist appointments, dentist appointments, etc. in this time period as well), extracurricular activities, birthday parties, school stuff, and church (we're with Katie there all the time as well). It's just a struggle to figure out enough time to clean the house, do the laundry, cook, and actually get to a grocery store!

So, today, after our traumatic experience yesterday, Katie decided that she was mad at me. She pushed me away, she refused to look at me, she refused to cuddle and snuggle, she refused to let me hold her, she didn't want me feeding her, and most of all she did not want Dh leaving after he came home. There were moments when she played with me, when she smiled at me, but if she thought about it she remembered she was angry with me and pushed me away. It's like we have taken a 3 week step back. We will work through it, and I doubt it takes 3 more weeks to get back to where we were, but it's hard emotionally to go back to that phase now. I'm taking it as an opportunity to work more on the bonding activities...to cement them in her brain.

I did not attempt to take photos of her today. But I can leave you with the photo I took on Sunday - with her cute bows that Beth made for her! :)