Talk to me about seperation anxiety and sleep. Please.

[MonkeyBeard]

DS is 10 months. Following his hideous four month sleep regression we worked really hard on his sleep and, with a big dollop of luck, he learned to go to sleep by himself in his cot for naps and bedtime by six months. Amazing! He has a dummy and comforter.

The past week all hell has broken loose. The naptime or bedtime routine involves us kissing him, saying sleep well and leaving the room. He has decided to add inconsolable screaming at this point.

Calming him doesn't really work. He either continues to be upset anyway or tries to play. He can't be cuddled to sleep. Eventually he ends up exhausted and passes out, normally then only napping for half an hour. It's taken two hours to put him down for a nap at points. Sitting in his room results in him trying to play and throwing dummies at us. Earlier naps haven't helped, or later ones.

How do I help him through this stage?!

No advice as my almost 9 month old is doing the same at the moment so following with interest!

It’s exhausting though...

It's horrible. I feel like I've been through an emotional wringer every time! Urgh.

Hi, does anyone have any tips how to deal with separation anxiety at bed time with an almost 2 yr old without them screaming the house down and waking their sibling up?

Sorry ignore this, I was meant to start a new thread!

Your post made me laugh! Not your problem, that bit sounds grim, just the way you write. Sorry you’re going through this.

Can I ask what makes you think it’s separation anxiety? You’re saying he can’t be comforted etc so it sounds like maybe that’s not it? How does he sleep overnight? How many naps is he having? My DD dropped to one nap at 10m because she went from going to sleep beautifully to resisting her nap - either screaming but more often just playing instead of going to sleep. Same at bedtime. It happened almost overnight. I switched her to one nap and she went back to going to sleep happily, straight away, and napping for around 2 hours. For around a month it was a little tricky as really she needed more than one nap but fewer than two naps. I went back and forth a couple of times but overall one nap worked better while she adjusted. Just mentioning this as it could be a routine issue?

It could well be a routine issue, as he doesn't quite seem to fit the wake windows for two naps on my beloved Huckleberry anymore. We do seem to have made a bit of progress the past few days and bedtime and morning naps have returned to being fairly painless, yay! We appear to only accept afternoon naps by dozing off while we're out in the pram though, which requires some carefully timing to be awake in time for bedtime. But no screaming, so that's a plus.

Clearly shouldn't have written that post - bedtime last night and nap attempts today were utter shit!