Your journey to parenthood has not been a typical one (understatement). Most couples have 9 months to focus intensely on educating themselves regarding the developmental stages and needs of their baby’s all important first year. You will not be given the benefit of “nature’s time table”. And, while it may be very difficult emotionally to read and educate yourself about a baby you fear will never arrive, I hope you will trust this truism, “if you persist in adoption unlike in infertility, you will be successful”

 

NOW is the time to read and learn all that you can about how to stimulate your child’s learning during the first year of life- the brain’s most rapid period of growth other than puberty. Adoption can happen very fast! You may be at work one day and be at home with a newborn the next- it happened to me! Our pediatrician adoptive parent* suggest the following books:

 

  1. What to Expect the First Year
  2. Baby 411: Your Baby, Birth to 1 Year
  3. The Happiest Baby on the Block
  4. Caring for your Baby and Young Child

 

Thank you to *Dr. Emily Kelleher, Northeast Cincinnati Pediatrics.