Separation Anxiety

Got this from my baby friend Jareth's blog:

Extract from baby center:

---

Your 9-month-old: Week 1


How your baby's growing:
Because of separation anxiety, this can be a tough time to be away from your baby for any length of time. But it may also be hard to travel with your baby right now. He's become used to his surroundings and familiar faces, and he likes predictability. So being on the road can disrupt his sense of security and routine, especially when visiting an unfamiliar place or meeting lots of strangers.

At this age, he doesn't grasp the concept of travel but he'll realize he's in a new, strange place. Be ready for some cranky, clingy behavior and prepare plenty of distractions — picture books, noise-making toys, nesting blocks, hand puppets, and definitely his security object, if he has one. Schedule plenty of downtime away from all the strangers to let him decompress.

---

She's been developing some sort of separation anxiety since a month back. My mother-in-law has mentioned that to us when she's helping to take care of Trisha while I was still working.

Trisha will cry the moment she sees us walking away from her (that is if there's no one else with her in the room or near her). The moment we walked back towards her she stops crying.

I have experienced this 1st hand since I started taking care of her full time. This means I have to bring her everywhere with me when she's awake. I can't even put her on her bumper mat with her toys and go into the bathroom just to empty her bathtub. She will start whining and crawling and crying towards the bathroom. I've been trying to "talk" her out of this separation anxiety by telling her that Mummy just need 5 mins here and there to do things for her but it doesn't seem to work....sigh.

Anyway, sometimes I just let her cry, she got to learn I'm not really leaving/abandoning her. Sometimes, she just look so pitiful that I can't bear to let her cry for too long, so in most of the places where I knew I may need to do some chores (eg kitchen to cook her porridge, bathroom to get her bath ready, etc), I'll make sure there's something she can sit on to look at me while I work. So we had a extra highchair in the kitchen and recently, I realised I could sit her in her car float in the bathroom while I go about her bath things. I'm pretty smug that I thought of this...hhhaha...

So we will be leaving for a new country very soon, hopefully by then, she will get past this separation anxiety phase and be very excited about this change in environment! =)