My 7 1/2 month old has just begun experiencing separation anxiety. I've got a pretty good handle on how to deal with it during the day - extra snuggles, try not to leave the room too often or for too long, bring him with me when I need to be in another room, wear him when he's having an especially difficult time, have husband spend lots of time with him snuggling and playing and soothing...and of course, lots of patience!
But night time is causing the most issues, and I'm not sure what would be the best way to work through it. It has only just started, so I'm not sure if this will continue to be an issue, but three nights ago, and last night he woke crying and when I went in there to resettle him, he just couldn't. (for some reason, the one night in between those two he slept straight through as normal). In the past we have discovered that when he won't stop moving and/or looking around and/or trying to interact with us, the best thing is to just leave the room and he'll either settle to sleep on his own, or let us know when he's ready for one more quick pat before passing out. So when he wouldn't settle, I tried leaving the room. He wailed. We did this a few times, and then I thought perhaps he needs reassurance that I'm not abandoning him, so maybe I should stay longer. I tried nursing, hoping it would relax him enough to drift off to sleep, but no luck. I sat on the stool beside the crib, but wasn't doing anything with him at all...just being present. He was calm but was either up on all fours staring at me, or lying down but still staring at me. Last night he was also reaching through the bars of the crib to grab onto me, and was trying to pull himself up on the side to get to me (time to lower the mattress!). If I would make any effort to get up, he would cry immediately. Every time he would get up, I would put him back down and he would stay down for a minute before popping back up. I lost count of how many times I did this. I considered leaving one of the times he had his head down and turned away from me, but figured that would probably do more harm than good by adding to his fear and anxiety. This continued for over an hour and then when he stayed down for a couple minutes, I had the feeling it was safe to leave. So I went back to bed, and he seemed to fall back to sleep. About 45 minutes later though, he woke again. My husband was getting up anyway for an early shift, so he went in and managed to settle him. He ended up being the one to finally settle him back to sleep the first time he did this too. I wonder if he's fighting sleep harder when I'm in the room because he so badly wants to be with me. Then of course, he woke a half hour earlier than normal for the day, despite losing about an hour and a half of sleep last night. He's napping now...hopefully it's a long one.
Anyway, I'm just hoping for some input and ideas of things that I can do to reassure him, hopefully without creating bad habits. Should I just keep doing what I'm doing and hope it doesn't last long? Should I be sleeping in his room? That idea makes me quite nervous as i really don't want to undo all the hard work we've done to promote independent sleep! Should I be sending my husband in more? Should I just drug him up?? (Kidding!!!)
It's only happened two nights, and not even twice in a row, so maybe I am worrying too much about something that might not even become a problem. But I just figure that having a plan in place would be the best way to approach this. So that I feel more calm and confident, and hopefully that transfers to him. And so that a week or a month from now, I don't look back and realize that something we did in response to this only created more problems...
