For those that read my other blog and saw my update today, I will be posting about it on here too but am still trying to formulate my thoughts into a more deserving post for my baby Stoli. I don’t want to write something that’s rushed or pictures aren’t included or I forget something. I’m devastated right now and it’s intensified by the pregnancy hormones. Right now I don’t know that I will ever be the same again. But since I’m spending a lot of time potty training right now and writing about it on my Austin mom blog, I figured I’d share the happenings on here too.
We’ve been trying to potty train Brady unsuccessfully for the last year. I have to admit full effort wasn’t put into the earlier attempts but we thought we were doing the things that everyone was telling us worked for them and their kids were picking up so easily. But each child has a different personality and with that comes a different potty training style. Without a doubt, I can say potty training has been one of the more challenging tasks so far.
We had everything for Brady – a potty chair, a potty ring, books, stickers, candy, panties, everything in hopes we could convince her to want to potty on her own. While she liked all the fun stuff like stickers, it wasn’t enough for her to sit on the potty. She hated sitting on the potty so much and would writhe around and scream like she was terrified of it. We tried using a little step stool and a potty ring to see if that would be easier on her but she didn’t seem to like that anymore than the small potty. Other people suggested just sitting her on the big potty or turning her backwards on the big potty so she could get used to it and eliminate the step of transitioning her from small potty to big potty in the future – that didn’t work either.
At her 3 year well child check appointment, the pediatrician seemed disappointed that we weren’t making any strides with potty training. We hadn’t been particularly agressive in the past because we had heard from other people (we’ve talked to a lot of people about this if you can’t tell) that if you try to force potty training before a child is ready that it will just be delayed so we were continuing to allow Brady to call the shots. Based on her personality, we decided an intense, aggressive approach to the potty might be what would get things moving in the right direction.
A couple of my friends had been talking about shutting themselves into the house one weekend and doing a potty training boot camp to really kick things off with the potty training. So, for the three day, New Year’s, weekend we did just that. There weren’t really any manuals about how to do such an intense period of potty training. Saturday morning when she woke up we took off her diaper first thing and set her on her potty. We had a gate up and kept her confined to a small area of the bathroom and hallway. It was tight and uncomfortable quarters for all three of us but we camped out with a basket full of books and prepared to spend the day in there. That first day was an epic battle of wills. We started out at 9am and even with a 2 hour nap she managed to stay dry and not go potty at all until 6:30pm. Of course, she waited until Casey was outside talking to our neighbor across the street before she went. But once she saw all the praise I gave her and rewards she received after going to the potty, that was a reward in itself. She didn’t want to stop talking about it and wanted to tell as many people as she could including a call to Nana and Papa to share the good news!
Sunday was still a bit of touch and go but after the self esteem boost from Saturday night’s peeing, Brady figured out what to do and knew what was expected of her on the potty. Maybe this potty training thing wasn’t so scary after all. She was definitely digging the cool new panties she got to wear! We still spent long stretches waiting for her to go but once she did, it allowed us all a bit more room to roam between trips to the bathroom. There were still accidents but many more frequent (willing) trips to the potty as well.
Monday brought our first trips away from the house and Brady did great and stayed dry on both trips out. Since then she’s been making great progress and can stay dry all night, through naps, and while running errands. And some of our errands are 2-3 hours long. I’m so surprised at the strides she’s made in such a short period of time but we’re not done yet.
Going poop is still a work in progress and not one she’s particularly motivated about. She’s been telling us about her poops as soon as she goes for several months now and is even more timely in telling us now that it’s in panties but she doesn’t want the poop in the potty. I’m hoping this will get easier and she’s had one success so she knows what to do but isn’t quite there yet. Her first success was rewarded with a big Brobee doll and ice cream with sprinkles so we’re hoping that continues to be a motivator. We’ve heard pooping on the potty is much harder and doesn’t necessarily come at the same time as peeing so we’ll continue to be patient.