Too Attached?

[Auraji]

Hello everyone, I really need some advice. Im starting to doubt myself and feeling like maybe Im doing something wrong. My DD is 12m&2W, since the beginning she's been a mama's girl. I dont have family here or really any friends and DP works a lot, so it's basically always been the two of us. I always took her out with me, she's friendly to people, but a bit shy. DP's friends come over and she hangs out, but she always needs to be with me. All.the.time.

If we're hanging outside and I go in for a second to get a glass of water or a snack for her or whatever, she can see me through the glass door she'll freak out and cry. I've been going to a therapist on Sats and it's easier for me to take her with me, because if I leave her with DP she basically spends the whole time crying at the top of her lungs. Today a friend drove me there and I put her in the car seat, she'll cry the time it takes to get in the passenger seat. We had to get some gas, I got out, she cried even though she could see me. We got to the place, she cried the whole time until I got her out of the car seat.

She's always like this, if I walk away she freaks out. She's ok if we're hanging out at home and for example she'll climb up the stairs and go play in dss room for awhile and then when she wants me she just sits at the top of the stairs and calls me mama, but it's impossible for me to leave her to go do anything without her crying the whole time and that stresses me and breaks my heart.

The thing is she's always been close to me, I wear her a lot, we co-sleep. She still breastfeeds constantly and she always has my attention. I wonder why she has such bad separation anxiety. Even when sleeping, she wants to sleep holding onto my breast and if Im not in bed with her will wake probably every hour.

[MCatLvrMom2A&X]

Both mine were that way but they outgrew it. Both are very independent now.

[Mother in Mercy]

Mine is just 7 months now but I have always been really anxious to make sure he is growing into independence and that he is given space to do so (largely b/c I feel like I wasn't given that room). It sounds like you're doing all sorts of great things to make her feel comfortable, so it's possible it may not be in the method, but in the manner. YKWIM? I've found this with myself time and time again (and it's often DH who I need to point it out to me) that when I'm feeling off or emotional, it invisibly trickles into DS and he acts clingy or whiny or whatever it is. It's SOO SUBTLE with us and really hard to catch yourself doing, but sometimes it's even in the worrying that he'll cry that makes him cry more.

This probably doesn't make any sense. Ok, here's a good example: I've been babysitting another baby just a few weeks older than DS, and for a while I kept saying they were going through such a clingy phase, both at the same time. They would both be there on the floor, playing, until one would cry, then I would pick him up and soothe him, then the other would cry so I would switch, and then the 1st would cry... and so on into insanity. Then (like WEEKS later) I suddenly noticed... when I picked one up or put him down, I would look at whoever was not picked up anxiously, thinking to myself, "don't cry don't cry are you going to cry?" And THEN he cried!

So I started to just put on confidence like a garment (that didn't really belong to me!) and when I picked one up I would stride off with him into the other side of the room and keep doing whatever it was I needed to do... and the other one would fuss or cry for a second, and if I didn't reappear and kept making busy noises, he woud calm down and play with the stuff around him! It was magical. You could even hear this sort of concluding sound at the end of the fussing, like a little baby sigh: "Oh, well, guess I'll play with this block then." They weren't seriously upset, they could deal, but I hadn't been letting them b/c I was so anxious about whether or not they were upset.

I don't know if any of this is helpful in your situation, except maybe to just really carefully (and brutally honestly!) examine all of your more subtle body-language and other communications with your child, and have your DP give you honest feedback, too. Maybe you get more worked up about walking out of the room without her than you realize? It's SOOO easy to do, without even knowing it! I have to be on guard constantly. I think it's probably something that parents drawn to AP are prone to naturally... just one of the pitfalls of our personalities. Who knows? It's an area to grow in!

Anyway, that was a bit of a novel but I hope it helps!