Therapy making things worse?
I am currently 39 weeks pregnant with our second child. Our first (3M) is in daycare full time and has been since 7 months old.
Around 6 weeks ago I had to be admitted to hospital with pneumonia, my husband dropped our son at daycare and took me to the hospital. When the little one got home I was gone. He'd seen me struggle for the best part of a week being really unwell.
After this, he really struggled to go to daycare, it took us weeks to get him to be happy and not be upset at every drop off, worrying about who was going to pick him up etc. During this time I was trying to get him an appointment with an age appropriate therapist to help him work through what was obviously a traumatic experience for him.
We had the first appointment with him yesterday. I had met with her the week previous to talk through the approach, and explain that I wanted to try and avoid him being retraumatised when I go into hospital to have the baby. Her approach was gentle EMDR style, where I read a story about a 'little boy' but which detailed the events of me going to hospital, while he held gently vibrating buzzers.
Until yesterday we had actually gotten back to a really good place with daycare, with him going happily. After the session however, he got upset at the prospect of me dropping him off, so I kept him home. Then this morning he was genuinely hysterical. I took him in late and will pick him up early, but it was really hard.
I'm wondering whether another appointment is a good idea? On one hand I think it might be good that his worries have been brought to the surface and he's working through them rather than burying them, on another we had actually made progress until now!
I'd love to hear people's thoughts? I've asked the therapist too but conscious that her opinion might be slightly biased.