Day Trippers and Night Terrors – The Little Man is Feeling the Pain of Being Apart, and it’s Breaking Evanne Ní Chuilinn’s Heart…

It’s not like him to scream. It’s not even like him to cry. He’s a social little boy, and in his 10 months (tomorrow), he has never gone through a phase of making strange. That’s why this is so difficult. 

I’m not even sure he’s fully awake when it happens. He will suddenly start crying, a cry which during the first few nights, turned very quickly into a shriek. The sobbing would continue, and the decibel level would be directly proportionate to how far out the door I was after each visit. Nighttime waking is one thing, but this clingy desperate behaviour was all new to us. And then it clicked. Separation anxiety.

It began just over a week ago, when his Daddy was away with work. Very suddenly one morning, there was no sign of Daddy, and Daddy didn’t materialise for a full week. During that week, Mammy disappeared for hours on end. She disappeared out the door, left a strange lady in the house, and didn’t even come home for goodnight cuddles.

At some stage, most people have to introduce a “nanny” or childminder. We have been lucky enough to find someone we like, and decided to have a trial run during a run of days when I was off, and could be contacted and summoned at the drop of a hat. Only our new childminder didn’t need me, and didn’t want me to come home. She wanted to find her feet, and put Séimí to bed, as she would so often have to do for us. The little man behaved, as always, but it only took a couple of days for him to figure out what was going on. Mammy was leaving, a strange lady was pretending to be Mammy, and where the hell was Daddy?? The confusion he was feeling during the day must have been upsetting him at night, because not long after we introduced a childminder, Séimí started waking at night in an awful state.  

So far, the worst bout of screaming has lasted just under two hours. He would so often be on the cusp of slumber and then he’d realised he was on his own again, and we’d be back to square one. Maybe two hours was a long time, or too long to wait, but eventually we caved and gave a bottle at 5am. He went back to sleep, and woke up as if the trauma of the night before had never happened.

Other nights it lasts an hour, or an hour and a half, but it’s exhausting for everybody and it’s an awful sight. Your little baby, standing up in his cot, hanging over it, leaning towards the door through which you have just exited....again. It’s heartbreaking. One night, I counted the number of times I lay him back down, only for him to bounce back up again as soon as I was out of sight - 15. In and out, 15 times, 15 bouts of momentary calm, and 15 surges of absolute panic. At 4am.

Eventually he calms down or tires himself out for long to fall back asleep, but I don’t have the answer. It happened as recently as last night, though it has subsided somewhat since we were all able to spend the weekend together. Maybe the family time has reassured him, or maybe he’s just getting used to this new development. Either way it doesn’t make going out the door any easier, it doesn’t weaken the hold he has on my heartstrings, and it certainly doesn’t make rolling in and out of bed at every hour of the night any less painful.   

Chat next week friends xx