Today I'm going to use the word poop a lot. I'm going to write about potty training. I'll have to look back through my posts. I can't remember if I've written about it before.
Here is the synopsis: We started using the potty around her first birthday. She HATED pooping in her diaper so we got her a potty chair. When she started pooping, we put her on the chair. She loved it. She stopped screaming while she pooped. We knew she peed first thing after waking up so we started putting her on the chair first thing in the morning. After a few days she peed in the potty. Once she knew the potty was the place to go we used it as much as possible.
I tried to do this with no pressure. Most mornings, L. would get up and pee in the morning and then she'd wear training pants (I ordered cloth ones online because they don't sell them in the stores and all the disposables are too big) until we'd had enough for the day (translation: until we'd miss enough times that I was sick of wet training pants and put a diaper on her.) We started teaching her the sign for potty. If we had to go to the bathroom, we took her along and she sat on her chair while we sat on ours. We put a little basket of books next to her potty so she'd sit on it long enough to do her business. We just tried to make it a really normal part of our daily routine.
Here we are at 19 months and she's doing great. She uses the potty at least twice a day at the very minimum (if we're not in the mood to try very hard) and on a good day as many as five or six times. Every now and then she goes into the bathroom by herself and pees in her potty. Once time she even took her diaper off and sat herself down to go. Once she got out of the bathtub because she had to pee. She peed in her potty and got back in the tub. She can do the sign for potty and she can say, "potty". She tells you when she's wet her diaper. She's only pooped in her diaper three times since last December.
I know we still have a ways to go but I feel like we're doing well. The main reason we're doing so well is that L. hates having a wet or soiled diaper. I'll take it. I don't want to make her go in a diaper if she doesn't want to.
But, as of late, that's been a challenge. We've had a few good nights sleep. She's still getting up before dawn but if I've been managing to get some good rest. Three nights ago I slept for 8.5 hours straight. It was amazing. Totally fabulous. I wanted it to happen over and over again. And of course it didn't.
The last two nights have been rough. Nap time the last few days have been horrible.
It goes something like this. L.'s tired, she nurses, I put her in her crib to nap and she starts crying. She says she has to go potty. I take her out and she goes potty. I put her back in the crib. She says she has to go potty. Repeat 10 times. Have tantrum.
Finally I just put the potty in the crib with her. That just pissed her off. Obviously she wanted out of the crib. She didn't want the potty and she was super angry that I'd called her bluff. She told me she didn't want it and tried to throw it out of the crib. I took it out and she said she had to go potty. When I was about to lose my mind, she lay down, rolled over and went to sleep.
So, that's nap time. Fun, right?
The night before last she woke up at 12:45am and said she had to go potty. I took her out, she went potty, I put her back in her crib and she fell asleep. Slept until morning.
Last night, same thing. I took her out, she sat on the potty but didn't go. I put her back in her crib and she started crying and saying she had to go potty. I told her no. She lay down and I thought she went back to sleep. Ten minutes later she cried and I found her standing in the crib trying to take her diaper off. She'd peed in her diaper. I felt like a bad mom because she really did need to go and I told her no. I put a clean diaper on her and we started over. [Insert the nap routine described above here.] An hour and fifteen minutes later, she went to sleep and slept until morning.
I was tired this morning. This afternoon I didn't even try putting her in her crib to nap. I dreaded the potential fighting and crying and tantrums. I waited for her to get so tired she wanted to sleep but she never got there. We went out to play with friends this afternoon without having taken a nap. She was fine. She slept in the car a little on the way home and fell asleep at 5:30pm. She woke up at 7pm and had some milk. I put a nighttime diaper and some PJ's on her and she fell asleep again.
We're definitely not on schedule today. We'll just have to see what happens tonight.
I've decided from this point forward I'm going to get her out once to use the potty. I want to trust her when she tells me she has to go (so much of the time she really does) but I don't want to let it get out of hand either. I'm going to let her get up once and then after that (whether she goes or not) she doesn't get to get out of the crib again. It's pretty apparent when I put the potty in the crib if she really wanted it or not.
And just because I know some of you are thinking this...I know, I know, it's really disgusting to put a potty in her crib. I sanitize it after every use. It's clean I promise. It wouldn't be in her crib otherwise and I don't think she'll ever actually use it while it's in there (she'll probably prove me wrong just because I wrote that.) I would never, EVER leave it in there with her unsupervised. I'm there the whole time. Obviously she could use it climb out (or she could throw it) and that would not be good. So, don't worry. I know it sounds disgusting but it's the only way I can think of to reconcile potty training and sleep routine when the child is obviously trying to manipulate her way out of bed. And she's tired. She needs to sleep. I need her to sleep.
That's it for now. I'll let you know how she does tonight. Cross your fingers she sleeps well.
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