8 month old sleep regression - separation anxiety - advice please

[cityangel]

Hi MN friends any help ideas would be great

our ds has never been a good sleeper but at 4 months trying bath bottle bed routine at 7pm and initially controlled crying (3 days) he happily settled down waking only once in the night and thriving on the energy good sleep gave him He slept well with only one night waking for 3 months.

We only recently put him into his own room which I now realise was too late for him as he seems too aware of diferent environments. But thats where we are. 2 weeks ago he spent the weekend with Daddy had a great time but was mopey.

He has recently started crawling and trying to stand up. Finding the balance of active mind v physical fun is hard.

Recently he just seems to have permanent separation anxiety He seems to have regressed massively and will only go to sleep nursed or will sit rocking in the cot for ages protesting till the final flop.

All good advice on how to reassure him without going back to square one would be good. I just don't want to undo all of the built up understanding of sleeping on his own... equally if he has a particular need to be closer to Mummy for a couple of months and then grows out of it then thats fine.

thanks for the advice

no advice but it sounds normal.

we just go with the flow in oor hoose.

hi cityangel, our DS did this at about the same stage.
We agreed between DP and I some strategies to help him re-learn that he could go to sleep by himself.
First one was that we would go in when he woke and cried, would hug DS while he was standing up but not pick him up out cot. Would repeat soothing 'you're a good boy, what a good sleepy boy' type phrases - this was different to any previous strategy where we didn't really talk to DS to calm him, just rocked or hummed or something.
Eventually he'd allow himself to be persuaded to sit then flop down back to sleep.
Next stage was kneel down at his level, him in cot, and lay a hand on shoulder again soothing with voice and he'd eventually sit down, lie down and go to sleep.
We planned further stages of no touching, sitting further away etc, but actually after about 3 days of stage 1, and 3 of stage 2 he just stopped waking in the night (or rather, probably woke, but went back off to sleep by himself again).
Hope some of this is helpful!

thank you lady bee this sounds like a good strategy for us to try