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Northern California Babies
18 month separation anxiety affecting sleep?
N was a craptacular sleeper for the first 13 months of her life. We did some sleep training (a very modified CIO) and for the past 5 months, with few exceptions, she has slept 7 pm to 7 am. Pure bliss.
For the past week and a half or so, she has been waking up anywhere from midnight to 3 am and screaming, screaming, SCREAMING. Like hair on fire screaming. When either DH or I go in to get her she wiggles out of our arms and make a beeline for her door. If it is open she grabs her bear and makes a beeline for our bed, and demands to get in. If the door is closed she bangs on it, wiggles the doorknob, and continues the screaming. I would love to have her in our bed if she would actually sleep, but she decides it is party time and either plays with my hair, kicks me in the head, or says 'mom eye' while repeatedly jabbing me in the eye.
Is this normal almost 18 month developmental stuff? A phase? We have been spoiled by good sleep and can't function with waking at 3 am and staying up for sometimes hours. We will have a houseful of overnight guests next week and are traveling the next week, so sleep training right now isn't really an option. Any insights or advice is greatly appreciated.
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Re: 18 month separation anxiety affecting sleep?
The Blog | BirthbyKellyM
No advice but dude it must be something about 18 months. Or crap, I just remembered Tri_bride asking this 6 moths ago and me pointing her to askmoxie.org. Crap crap crap, here is the link: https://www.askmoxie.org/2009/01/qa-18month-sleep-regression-redux.html
Sounds like we are in for a bit of suckage for a while but that it should end soonish.
For what it's worth, Charlie has been hosting parties with E-L-M-O at 2 am on a semi regular basis and DH and I want to cut a *** at that hour. When he finally started sleeping semi normally again (7 pm to 6 am roughly with several wake-ups to nurse), I wanted to cry with relief. I hope he never wakes up while it's still dark out, pats me on the face, signs for upstairs and then begs, in sign language, for elmo again.
This happened to us around 18 months also. M would get upset when we tried to leave the room at bedtime AND would also wake-up in the 3 am time frame screaming bloody murder. It was just a phase and do believe it was related to separation anxiety, though am having trouble recalling how we handled it. I think it lasted a week or two. We had to rock him to sleep at bedtime and for the middle of the night wakings, we would just go in (and by we, I mean I), reassure him that we were there and that it was sleepy time and rock him back to sleep. We never let him leave the room and I don't remember him trying to escape to our room. Good luck - I hope it's a quick phase for you too.