I can’t decide whether evolutionarily speaking the separation anxiety stage comes when a baby is more likely to face certain threats and therefore needs to develop an even deeper attachment with you, or, whether it is indicative of a time when you are now sufficiently attached to your baby to cope with such a stage in them.
Either way, it is an excruciating stage for both of us. He is perpetually in floods of anxious tears and I, like the huddled masses, yearn to breath free.
And all the articles telling you that if your child has too much separation anxiety it means that you are a bad mother! Horrors. Hope it ends soon and you can go to the toilet in peace again.
I think it comes when they finally realise that you are actually a separate person from them. I don’t think it happened with either of my two when we were anywhere near ready to cope with it. I can still remember the quiet desperation and the longing for them to sleep so I could just-have-five-minutes. I hope this stage passes quickly for you.