My 11 month old son seems to have separation anxiety. I am returning to work next month and am so so worried about leaving him with how upset he gets without me. I will be returning to work part time, so our plan is for his grandparents to look after him (my mom one day a week and MIL one day a week). My baby has spent ample amount of time with both sets of grandparents over the past 11 months and is familiar with them and their homes. My mom has had sleepovers with him a few times also, but at the last sleepover when he was 8 months, he randomly became really upset about 1 hour after drop off and eventually cried himself to sleep for the night.
We have recently been ‘practising’ leaving him with his grandparents with my return to work approaching and they have each looked after him for 2 hours at a time to begin with. Both times he has screamed and screamed (the kind of cry where they hold their breath for ages) and again, eventually exhausted himself so much that he fell asleep.
It kills me to see him this way and I am so worried to leave him all day when I start work next month. I have had some people tell me that he will get used to it, but what if he doesn’t? How long will it take for him to feel better about this? I worry that this will be a very long process with how upset he gets and with how nothing will calm him down (cuddles, walking in pushchair, toys, tv etc- they tried it all!) and I’m not sure I can let him be this worked up for months on end, if that’s how long it will take. I also feel so awful for the grandparents as it is obviously really sad for them to see and will be super exhausting for them. They are doing us a favour by taking care of him, as much as they love to spend time with him, this is of course hard to deal with! I have already had a text from my mom saying that she hopes he doesn’t hate her!
I think I am just looking for a little bit of reassurance. Has anyone else had this level of separation anxiety when their child doesn’t even want their grandparents? Does this get better and how long should I expect it to take?