It Wasn’t Love At First Sight

Dear Inklings,

Oh, you thought this was going to be a post about my husband. If we’re being honest, it wasn’t love at first sight there, either. That’s a story involving frozen yogurt after young adult fellowship and an ill-timed insult, resulting in a frozen heart, thawed only after—

I’ll save that for another time.

This story is about my first child, whom we adopted from overseas as a 16-month-old. He doesn’t appear in the town hermitage often, though if you’ve been reading for a while, you’ll know he’s now school-aged. Ah yes, he’s the reason for my homeschooling woes. Joys. Did I say woes?

Let me tell you about E, the child who first made me a mother, although chronologically, he’s our middle child.

Adoption is complicated like that.

Here’s how else it’s complicated. There’s a thing they warn you about in all the trainings and books: sometimes an adopted kid will attach to one parent and completely reject the other.

Guess who was the rejected parent?

Being prepared for it is one thing. Facing it is quite another. From the beginning, E wanted nothing to do with me. He didn’t want to hold my hand. He wouldn’t let me feed him. He definitely didn’t want me to hold him.

This baby we had waited for, prayed for, and fought for, for years, just didn’t want me. This alone was heartbreaking. What hurt the most was when he would choose any stranger to hold him. But never me.

I don’t want to make this about my adoption sad story, because as adoptive/foster parents all know, adoption is never about the parent. The reason I’m telling this story is because this doesn’t happen only in adoptive parent-child relationships, but in biological ones, too.

I’ve heard countless stories of parents who have struggled to bond with their children, parents who didn’t love their babies at first. And you know what?

That’s normal.

Even expecting this emotional distance and preparing for it did not soften the blow much. But I imagine not expecting it at all would have made the experience far worse to endure.

The common narrative is that when you give birth, you fall in love with your baby at once.

In reality, this is a stranger you have to get to know, just like any other person. Sometimes, it’s love at first sight. Other times, it’s not.

After E came home, and M’s paternity leave ended, it was just me at home, with this baby who wanted nothing to do with me.

He cried a lot. Not just tears and sniffling—full-on, body-slamming, ear-splitting screaming at the top of his lungs. And I couldn’t comfort him, because he didn’t want me to hold him. In fact, he would scream louder if I tried.

Everything was new to him. Everything scared him. It makes sense for adopted kids. All he knew was a life in the orphanage, with the same surroundings every single day.

Of course he was terrified.

From what some friends have related to me about their newborns, this sort of visceral, nonstop wailing isn’t uncommon. The complete bafflement and inability to comfort your child—also not uncommon.

There were days I had to leave him in his crib, put on noise-cancelling headphones, and just take a breather.

There were days I regretted having a child.

Oh gosh, that’s a thought a lot of parents have at least once, only ever in hushed whispers or behind closed doors.

But the thing is, there were these moments that would give me glimmers of hope: a little snuggle. A smile. And like a dummy, I’d melt and fall in love a little. You know?

E got sick quite a few times. After I’d cared for him on one of these occasions, he showed a preference for me even when M came home. Just for that day. And yes, that day is ingrained in my memory; why do you ask?

Like any other relationship, we have our ups and downs. I mean, just today I yelled at him for not focusing on his schoolwork and had to apologise for it later.

I can’t even pinpoint when E’s extreme preference for M finally faded.

One day, he wanted to hold both our hands. Another day, he chose to sit on my lap. Sometimes he wanted to hug me! Little by little, the walls between us crumbled.

LOOK HOW HAPPY I AM (Photo credit: Orange Turtle 2020)

As with so many things in life, when it arrived, I was already in the middle of it before I noticed it was happening.

After a while, it didn’t occur to me how normal it had become for me to be the bedtime person until one night, I asked M to do it. E threw a fit, and I realised then how much our bond had evolved.

I can tell you it took years of working at it and many tears to get to this point. I can tell you my relationship with E still doesn’t come naturally to me. We seem to function on different wavelengths. It takes extra effort to find common ground. 

But, when I look at him, I see a child who has the kindest heart. He has a depth of perception unique to a young child who has faced much loss. He’s compassionate, generous, affectionate. We were worried he would be jealous of his baby sister after being an only child for so long, but he’s never shown the slightest hint of jealousy. He treats her with the utmost tenderness and love, always eager to help.

It humbles me how much love he can hold for others. And I get to be part of his story as his mother.

These days, our struggles are ordinary ones. Writing homework. Memory drills. Not talking with his mouth full. How much Halloween candy he’s allowed to have at once.

But sometimes, in the middle of arguing about five more minutes on the playground, I marvel at how far we’ve come. This child who once couldn’t bear my touch now leans against me when I’m working on the sofa—as if he’s always belonged there.

About Me: I’m Tiffany, a literary fiction, fantasy, and memoir author. My writing has been published by The Cultivation Project and Renewal Missions. I’ve been writing this publication, The Untangling, since 2023. Order my books here or here.