Anxiety After Trip, going on 3 weeks

[KYKatydid]

DH and I took a trip overseas for 9 days. My mom came out to watch our DS (21 months) and mostly kept him on schedule. I absolutely expected him to have anxiety about sleep upon our return home (slept fine for my mom) particularly bedtime as we left in the middle of the night. No wonder! We were there when he went to sleep and weren't when he woke up. (this was not my ideal, but didn't have a choice in the time we left!)

He has improved but is still really very fussy when we try and leave after we go through our normal bedtime routine. After a couple nights where he woke up in hysterics I moved a msttresss in his room and spent three nights in there, leaving when he was STTN again.

We worked on slow fading with the chair method after that and feel like we are in a rut. He had another couple nights of waking up in hysterics so I moved the mattress back in thinking it wasn't enough the first go around. Last night was his first night since we came home where he didn't fuss and woke up happy. Tonight back to being quite upset.

I certainly don't want to make a new habit but we would love to (gently!) get back to us being able to lay him down and leave with out any fussing. TIA! 

[Katet]

Not quite the same situation but when one of my boys ended up in hospital, I got told for every night in hospital expect it to take 3 nights to sort its self out...IMHO at his age it will take a while for the fear to go away, because it's the prime age for SA even without the trip. 

It may well also just be normal ups & downs of getting older & some children do fuss at bedtime because of many other reasons.

[KYKatydid]

Hi Katet!,
Thank you for your response The 1:3 night bit of information is interesting! Sorry to hear your boy was in the hospital.

 He's totally fine about naps now with an occasional fussy one, which is to be expected on days he's extra tiredness or just wants some extra love.

And yes, of course there are many reasons for fussing. It was just extremely timely since we worked quite hard for him to be able to be laid down and go to sleep with out issue, we take our trip, and come home and he's struggling. Night and day difference.

The fussing just makes me so sad! I wasn't sure if there was a need to keep working on rebuilding trustbusters or if we just need to lovingly continue with a slow fade/chair method?

[KYKatydid]

Gracious pardon those typos! Phone+toddler 😂