Potty Time

We're potty training over here. It's been a pretty insane past few days to say the least, but we're finally starting to see some progress. This has been on my list of things to do before baby boy comes in a couple months, but I backed off for a while thinking it was just going to be too much - until one night before bedtime B randomly went to the potty on her own. A couple days later after researching every method possible on the internet, I decided to embrace the window of opportunity and go for it.

She's 22 months, so according to today's standards it's "early" and she "might not be ready." But I'm not quite sure I buy into the whole bandwagon of waiting. In the 1940s, the average age for potty training was 18 months, so why can't I pretend like it's 1940? I think most people wait because they don't want to pressure their child into doing something they just don't want to do - which makes sense - but with B, training (thankfully!) hasn't been a power struggle...rather a matter of simply learning a new task.

I read Toilet Training in Less than a Day, and started out with the techniques described in the book - but pretty much ended up with what I guess might be strategies from the 3-day boot camp method (although I never really read the 3-day book). We started on a Thursday and cooped up in our house through the weekend to ensure many opportunities to practice...

The morning of day 1 I wrapped up her big girl panties and also a drink and wet doll for her to open. While the doll didn't really work and it was pretty much impossible to get her to drink and wet, I think it was a really good tool to help B understand the concept of using the potty. Plus, she loves babies, so opened up the package and excitedly proclaimed, "Dede!!!!" She couldn't even wait to pull it out of the bag before giving it a bottle. :-)


We kept her in panties and a top only for the first 3 days, with pull-ups ("sleepy time panties") for nap and night. I'm still on the fence about whether or not to continue using the pull-ups for naps, as I worry it might become a crutch for her. We'll likely continue pull-ups at night until she continuously wakes up dry, which might not happen for a while as she still drinks milk before bedtime. During the day we had her drink as much liquid as possible (mostly juice, crystal lite, and water with ice), and bribed with M&M's and occasionally cheetos for both successful attempts and dry panties. We tried marshmallows too, but she didn't like the texture and spit them out after a few chews.

Other tools included the Potty Princess DVD and Sesame Street youtube clips on my lap top - most notably Elmo's Ducks, Elmo's Potty Time, and a few other old time favorites.

So how did it go? In summary - by day 2 I was ready to throw in the towel. I felt encouraged after day 1 as we had 3 successes - mostly because we spent a ridiculous amount of time just sitting on the potty. But with maybe 1 success on day 2 and a zillion accidents, I almost gave in.

On day 3 she miraculously started telling us when she needed to go potty, and every day since has been an improvement. We've made too much progress to revert back to diapers, and overall I am sooooo proud of our little girl for working to achieve such a big milestone. Good thing we're about to have another baby because I wouldn't know what to do without changing diapers for at least 4 years straight...