Tips for dealing with separation anxiety at night?

[beansprout]

Ds is 9 months and goes down ok (usually) but will often wake later in the evening or at our bedtime. He gets really upset and goes into melt down if I try to leave the room after comforting him. Sometimes he gets so tired he falls back to sleep but last night I ended up sleeping in there as it became impossible to leave! I don't really want to do this on a regular basis?

What has worked for other people? Btw, I won't do CC.
Thanks!

BS, DS doesn't seem to have seperation anxiety at any other time but recently he has started waking in the middle of the night and getting himself into a huge state. He did this tues night, and I spent and hour and a half trotting backwards and forwards with bottles, calpol, teething gel, cuddles. Gave up when DP wasn't getting a wink of sleep before his 5.30 am start and brought him in with us. I only offered him water. He seemed to be starting to get into feeds at night again after DP gave him one last week. I hoped that by taking away his reason for waking he might not wake again. Well he did, again the next night but I'm afraid I went in twice, but just left him. He is literally screaming for my attention, blood curdling screams and I feel that I don't want to teach him that is the way to get my attention. Crying, yes of course. But screaming is not on IMO. He settled quite quickly (less than 20mins) and slept through till morning. He screamed again when he woke up, again awful screams. I left him to it, untill he calmed down again (not long again) and went in intentionally when he was not screaming. He slept through last night. Fingers crossed for tonight.

Not much help to you as this is basically CC isn't it? But as both me and DP do such long shifts and it is so important I am able to concentrate and function at work, well that is my justification. Hope you don't all think I am a terribly cruel mummy.

I did end up doing a version of cc after saying I could never do it as ds used to wake very couple of hours. I did it instincitively rather than following a proper timetable and I picked ds up to calm him down when I went to see him. I just kept on going back to him over and over again and repeating that I loved him very much, but that he had to go to sleep. It did work quite quickly. He is now 16 months and he understsands that when I say 'it's time for sleep' that he has to lie down and go to sleep.

BTW, did your CSA situation ever get resolved?

Hi Beansprout.

We are still struggling a bit here although the going down at night thing has improved. Essentially we seem to have stumbled on a pu/pd method of getting ds to sleep at bedtime which does seem to work as long as I (or dh) cuddle and calm him each time. As for night wakings that's a different matter! Ds still has a bottle in the night (up to 9 ounces which he scoffs really quickly) but last night he woke at 10 in a real state. I didn't want to feed him (he'd had 7 ounces at 6.30 so couldn't be hungry) but it took ages to calm him down and even picking him up didn't stop the screaming. In the end I took him to bed with us but that's not a habit I want to get into as he seems to take up most of the bed and I end up balancing on the edge. We put him back after his bottle at 2 and he went down ok but the thought of these broken nights for much longer is just about too much to bear. I will be keeping a very close eye on this thread to see if anyone has any useful advice.....

Why is it that the good phases are so much shorter than the difficult ones??