What will my child's reaction be when we first meet?
At 10.5 months, my daughter shut down. She
would not make eye contact and
would whimper when I forced it. She got a hold of the cap to the bottle and
my passport and had a death grip on each of
them - they seemed to comfort her. Fortunately,
I had the opportunity to observe her with her nanny & it was obvious
that she was a happy child. Indeed, it only a day for that happy child
to shine through again.
Our 19 month old was very attached to her
nanny. She was mainly interested in
eating the Cheerios we brought as well as grabbing the little musical toy
with blinking lights we brought for her and
would not let go of it. She could
not stand on her own and would walk if someone held her up and encouraged
her to use her legs. She didn't want anything to do with me, though
she did go to my husband, but not for long. She clung tightly to her
nanny and cried. I think she may have
known something big was about to happen.
She looked terrified. After all the paperwork, we went back to our
hotel room. She screamed and cried the
whole way back to our hotel. We gave her
a some formula. She whimpered the whole time and looked so sad until she
fell asleep. I felt really bad but I was
not about to give her back! She was
in a much better mood the next day and drank a lot of her formula and ate
a lot of Cheerios, Gerber banana cookies and
some food from the buffet at the restaurant
downstairs. It took a couple of days to get a smile out of her.
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