Katherine Heigl admits adopted daughter Naleigh, 20 months, was drawn towards daddy, Josh Kelley, first. A hard thing to deal with for any mom!

“The first thing she said was, ‘Dada,’ and then she’d call everybody else she loved ‘Dada,’” Katherine says in the October issue of In Style. “She actually attached to Josh much faster.”

Katherine admits that it was difficult connecting to her new child, especially since she was working. But, she also recognizes that if she weren’t fulfilling her passion to act, she wouldn’t be the same kind of mom.

“I had a lot of complicated emotions about it because I chose to go back to work,” she says. “I love what I do and – this isn’t just making excuses – if I weren’t fulfilling this thing in me to perform, to live out my passion, I don’t know that I would be the mom I need to be.”

Eventually, though, Naleigh warmed up to her mama. “Naleigh learned with me that the word ‘Mama’ was synonymous with kisses,” Katherine says. “So when she first started saying, ‘Mama,’ she would also make a little kiss sound … She started saying it maybe a month or two ago. I would come into the room and she’d go, ‘Mama!’ And it was like, Thank God.”