Family bonding

Only a month away from the coming of our third child my husband and I have been talking about how we have bonded with our children and how we can keep bonding in the future.

When our oldest boy was born my husband spent a lot of time with him as a baby. When I was at home it was difficult for me to let go. If our baby boy would cry, and I could feel he wanted to breastfeed, it was hard for me to let go and let my husband try to calm him in his own ways. When we look back we realize how precious those moments between father and son where for both. It developed a natural trust from my son to his father and self-confidence in my husband that he could learn our son’s signals and in time understand them. Gradually my husband himself would come to me and say: “Our son is hungry”. With time I found it fascinating that my husband lacking all the feminine hormones that were rushing in my body due to pregnancy and later to breastfeeding could still understand our little baby so well. The first time I left them alone for one hour or so, encouraged by my husband, was when our baby was two months old. I left breast milk in a bottle (previously I had trained our baby to drink from it) and left, talking my cellular phone with me in case my husband needed some mom-advise.

How did it work? Horrible! Wonderful! It worked horrible because our little one didn’t take the bottle and desperately wanted mommy. I felt bad for not being there. But it worked wonderful in the long term because my husband fed our baby with a spoon and our son developed huge trust for him that can very clearly be seen even today.

So bonding worked wonderfully.

Two and a half years later our second son was born. And we wondered how are we going to bond to him when we have another little one that needs attention?

Bonding in this case worked differently, it had to. My husband and our second child haven’t spent as much time alone. And as a fact I haven’t have as much time alone to spend with our oldest boy since we had our second child. I carried our second baby with me everywhere. I still do. Our oldest child was at day care and I had time alone with our youngest child. So how did we bond? My natural bonding has been through breastfeeding. I breastfed our youngest boy until he was 18 months. As often as I can I take time alone with our oldest child, like when we went to the “learning work with chocolate”-class. My husband has bonded in different ways, by feeding him, taking him biking or trips in the car to see the aeroplanes in the airport.

Now so close to a new birth we think about these issues again. Talking about them helps us get insight. I would say it’s a good first step. How will it work? I cannot answer yet. All I know is that both my husband and I are full hearted into bonding and bonding from the beginning. I guess one natural issue in bonding is wanting to bond and using everyday activities to bond, while bathing, feeding, changing diapers or clothes, going for a walk, singing, reading a book.

Siblings also bond. Our children talk to their baby sibling in my belly, they caress baby by caressing my belly, they have even bought presents for baby (and baby will give them presents when he/she is born, of coarse).

And husband and wife bond . . . all the time. It’s one of the most important types of bonding for the family to work properly, to be safe and strong, to raise up self-confident children. How the couple bonds is very individual for every couple. As a principle of bonding they both need to want to bond, spent time alone, even if it is by having some tea when the children have gone to bed. It doesn’t need to be fancy, going out to restaurants all the time.

I will now go and do some bonding activities by packing some stuff for the family to take a trip together to spend the day outdoors! Wish us good luck with future bonding and feel encouraged to send your experiences of bonding!