One year ago, this was the very first picture I took of my son. I had picked him up a little over an hour previously from his biological mom’s house for a planned six-week temporary stay. Tears streaming down her face, she hugged him goodbye and hooked him into his car seat. I can’t imagine how she felt that day: fear, sadness, shame, maybe a little relief. I didn’t know it then, but I think part of her knew it was a forever goodbye.
When we got home, after taking an embarrassing amount of time to figure out how to unhook the car seat, here I sat. Overwhelmed by my own feelings: fear, unknown, joy. I hadn’t held him yet, and he was sleeping, so I wrestled with my nervous thoughts. Do I just let him sleep? Do I wake him up and introduce myself? Will he like me? Should I guard my heart from potential hurt and loss?
Eventually, he woke up, and I fed him. Overall, he wasn’t very interested in or seemingly aware of me. It’s hard to know what goes into the mind of a three-month-old. I know he had been recently in a respite emergency weekend situation. So maybe his body was already tense at once again being in a space of unknown.
A beautiful thing happened that night. Our two Boston Terrier puppies started wrestling around and play fighting. Just as I was about to reprimand them to stop, this loud belly laugh came out of this teeny, tiny three-month-old. And he just kept laughing and laughing at them. I believe this moment for him and me broke us from the nervousness. A belief was established that this would be okay, maybe even more than okay. That this would be good; that was the start of him first attaching to our puppies. A deep bond with our daughter followed this. His attachment came to us later on. Lots of emotions as I reflect on the past year, and I wouldn’t trade one day!