If this scenario rings true for you, let your child's therapist know because the child will not have any memory of what happened. As parents, we all have important data in our brains, we just don't know which bits are important.
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A therapist can help a person work through early, unremembered trauma better than a parent. As parents we feel so much guilt that we have caused pain in spite of our good intentions that it is difficult for us to listen to our children express their pain. I felt guilty that adoption caused Rachel pain. Parents who have had to leave an infant because of work, military service, or other adult emergencies do so without intending to cause lasting damage to their child. It may be very difficult to later look at the damage. That's why I'm saying that if you sense something happened in the first year of life that may have emotionally scarred your child, tell the therapist about your insight. The information may be of help.
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When Rachel was born, her birth mother was not allowed to hold her. Rachel was brought to me four days later. Who held her, cuddled her, talked to her in those first four days of life, those long first hours out of the safety of her mother's body? "Who held our baby in the hospital?" both Linda and I ask. We cried together about this deprivation of mothering.
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