will try to be brief.
DS is almost 16mo. night weaned a couple of months ago with success. He'd put himself to sleep quickly, albeit with either me or DP sitting in his room in silence. He generally slept 7pm-5/530am without a peep.
About 2/3 weeks ago bedtimes started becoming long drawn out teary affairs. He now cries when either DP or I put him down and he won't settle without a lot of cuddling, patting and he wriggles and fidgets for ages and it can take up to an hour for him to drop off. Because of the early waking we go to bed about 930pm so once he's finally asleep we have almost no evening.
no idea why DS is suddenly so upset and miserable and needy at bedtime. Not sure what to do about it but feels like we've taken loads of step backwards and that we're never going to be able to leave him to drop off on his own (which is the holy grail no??).
So plan is to start tonight with putting him down after milk and sitting/lying by his cot but IGNORE him completely. I know he'll cry and protest but am going to try to be strong. Hope he'll eventually get bored and give up and go to sleep. Am assuming the following night it'll take a little bit less etc and then bit by bit and can move further towards the door etc and try to get to a point where I can just put my head into the door and say "good night" or something and that'll be all he needs.
thing is, if he is going through a bout of separation anxiety/teething/development then I feel that this might be a bit mean and I just need to do what it takes to get him to sleep and ride it out and try again in a few weeks.
but I also feel a bit trapped again by bedtimes and I feel angry and frustrated by the whole thing.
What do people think??
Well that wasn't quite as brief as I thought it would be...