Tonight has finally brought me the rewards from many months (8months, 2weeks and 5days to be exact) of my effort in taking care of Zylan. He has finally responded by showing that he is attached to me. It is an EXtremely rewarding feeling knowing that he needs me to comfort him :-D
When we dropped him off at my in-laws' the following morning, he cried in refusal the first time I passed him over to my MIL.
Although surprised and touched by his actions, I quickly gave him a kiss and left hurriedly with a heavy heart. Coincidentally a couple days back, I just read that you should never prolong the good byes if your child has separation anxiety (not that I think Zylan has), but this is also to avoid confusing him further.
We arrived early at my in-laws' one day to pick him up and I didn't go up to carry him. He glared at me the whole time with an angry face until I went up to carry him, only then he gave me a smile.
He would look for me especially when it's bedtime and wants me to feed him and put him to sleep. Can't confirm exactly if that's the reason why many times when Daddy tries to put him to bed, he would end up not sleeping. Even after over an hour, when I go up to check on them, I would find him eyes all red, extremely tired and still roaming around the bed, having exhausted my resource (i.e. Daddy). It's as tho he is waiting for me to come upstairs to put him to bed :-p
But at the same time, it has also sparked worry in me that he will not be able to sleep if someone else put him to bed let alone sleep on his own. So since then I have been slowly encouraging Daddy to take part in his bedtime routine which sometimes comes in the form of me nagging at Daddy for not helping me out. Daddy would pick putting Zylan to bed over washing and sterilizing the bottles :-p Fair enough.
By doing so, it also brought on a lot of mixed feelings in me. On one hand I want to let him get used to Daddy putting him to sleep and at the same time I want to continue to comfort him like I used to. And when he cries looking for me, it's a nasty feeling not attending to him and leaving him to try and accept comfort of someone else.
But as I try to constantly remind myself, this is for the best for all of us, I should try to let things go and just relax! Hopefully in time to come I will be able to graciously accept the fact when Zylan no longer rely solely on me to comfort him.
