Seperation anxiety or overtired? Advice needed

[Moomicat]

My 7.5 month old DD (born at 34 weeks so really she is jusy 6 months old) has recently started to cry a lot when I leave the room or walk to the other side of it. She goes from being blissfully happy and smiley to suddenly tears and shrieking - what should I do? She is having enough sleeps in the day (I think) and is not overtired but I have just spent the best part of 1.5 hours trying to put her down to sleep, amid lots of tears, red face, crying, snot and I think a bit of teething too. How do I know how to seperate all the different things she seems to be displaying? And other then trying to sound patient and soothing, how can I get her to sleep without all the tears? She has only just started sleeping through the night, now she seems to go down later and later........help!!!!
moomicat

Moomicat, I distinctly remember the stage my ds went through (can't remember his exact age but he might have been just a little bit older than your dd), where he would cry every time I left the room. It was very frustrating but I'm positive it's just a separation anxiety stage, because they do get over it. The only way to cope with it is to take her with you when you go into another room, or try to distract her for a few minutes with a toy or the tv while you slip away for a minute. Actually a playpen would be really good if she's sitting up, I've just remembered that I used to put ds into his playpen with some toys if I had to go into another room or go outside to hang the washing out, etc etc. That used to keep him occupied for a little while and enabled me to get a few things done.

As far as the sleeping, I'm not sure what may be causing it (could be anything!!) but they seem to go through so many "phases" where they'll do something out of the ordinary for a while, and then go back to normal. Could be teething, or maybe she doesn't want to be left alone. My ds used to have a dummy for his daytime naps, so I think that gave him the comfort he needed, but you may wish to try something else like leaving the radio on very low or maybe some controlled crying to let her know that it's time to go to sleep (if you can manage it). Sorry, it seems like such a long time ago, I can't exactly remember how I dealt with all the different phases he went through!! HTH anyway.

don't know that this is right or not cos my kids have never been early sleepers , seeming not to need much sleep at all, but it strikes me that you say she isn't overtired and i wonder if she is tired enough? maybe too many day sleeps...? I'm terrible at sleeping myself unless i'm tired. nothing worse than trying to sleep when you aren't ready.