Potty Training

I have arrived at a rite of passage of parenthood.  I started potty training Zoey in March after all the weddings and my schedule opened up.  We hyped her up that the "diaper fairy" was coming and was taking all her diapers away and she was going to have to go to the potty and wear big girl undies.  She was so excited to see the diaper fairy left her some apple juice and proceeded to tell anyone who would listen about it.

Within a day of many accidents, she pretty much had pee down.  It wasn't 100% for a few weeks but she did so well.  Sometime in the last year she had developed this horrible fear of pooping in the potty.  I think it was after a couple poop accidents in the bathtub.  She refused.  It was awful and we had NO idea what to do.  I turned to Facebook, blogs, the pediatrician, books, anything - I was desperate.  The thing with Zoey is that she can't be bribed.  She has an iron will.  Not that it's a horrible thing, I think it'll serve her well later in life, but as a toddler it is really hard to parent.

As she couldn't be bribed, we ended up with a closet full of potty presents for pooping the toilet that she could have cared less about. We tried potty training dolly.

 I even resorted to throwing a tiny bit of tootsie roll in the potty after she peed (before she could turn around and see) and we celebrated that "poop" and she asked if she could go to Lagoon now (another bribe).  You see how this wasn't working out?  She got to the point that she would hold all her poop in until it would come barreling out at any given time and she would scream and freak out.  Luckily, most of this happened at home but there was one choice encounter at the Health Spot and I became THAT mom with the kid that got poo everywhere in their bathroom as she flailed off the seat in pure terror and smeared it everywhere.  It was prime timing as their toilet paper, paper towel, garbage sack and soap all ran out during our trip to the bathroom.  I learned quickly to carry gallon-sized Ziploc bags with me and a change of clothes.

We were soooo ready to give up but I didn't feel like I could go backward with how well she was doing going pee, it just didn't make sense. So we decided to have her tell us when she needed to go poop and we put a diaper on her.  We started slow and small and would just make her stand in the bathroom and poop in the diaper.  After a few days of that, we made her sit on the potty (lid up or down) with a diaper on and poop.  Until we graduated to cutting a hole in the diaper and she pooped in the potty!  It was the biggest celebration and I thought we had turned a corner.  Oh, no.  Now she didn't want to poop in the potty OR in a diaper and it was just chaos and she held it in.  Again.  So more Miralax it was.  Our doctor told us to pick a reward that could be easily taken away or given on a daily basis (i.e. TV instead of Lagoon) so we took away TV.  It may have been harder on me because I didn't know what to do with her while I showered.  But it worked and threw a fit she did.  We went THREE whole weeks without any TV.  Remember I told you about her will and how she couldn't be bribed?? It was actually quite pleasant and got us back into a routine of playing more instead of a TV babysitter.

So we were at Mike and Mary's one Sunday about a week later (after the hole in the diaper poop) for family dinner and she had had so many accidents there (three, I think) that I was out of spare underwear and by some miracle she had a spare pair of pants.  And that was all she had, no undies, just pants.  So the next time she needed to go she asked to go in the potty (WHA...???) and SHE DID (!) and hasn't looked back. She's earned all her potty presents and filled up her sticker chart and got to go see Finding Dory.  She still wears a night diaper at nights even though she tends to wake up dry, I don't want to chance it until she's doing it super well because if she wakes up in the middle of the night we're generally up for hours.  I'm so proud of her.  I don't know what clicked in her head but she decided to do it and has been ever since.  She poops so much now, I can't believe how horrible she must have been feeling to hold it in for 4 days at a time.

We finally figured out that she wasn't afraid of "losing a part of her body" like most kids are, she genuinely just thought it was disgusting.  If we held her hand of covered her eyes for the first few times, she did really well.  Now she likes to look at it and tell us what it looks like.  Nice huh?

So we survived.  I thought it would never end and just like that, it was over.  And I'm so glad.  What's nice too is Connor is in the same size diapers as Zoey was so we just continue to buy the same stuff.  But it's so nice to do it for one child instead of two!  To all those still in the trenches of potty training, my prayers are with you.