The Potty Training Thread.

[TravelingGal]

How's he doing Vesper?

I have an update to our experience. Ever since we've trained her, she's been getting pimples on her butt and on her privates. They'd come 2 or 3 at a time, were pretty big, have whiteheads, didn't seem to cause her any discomfort and went away leaving a bit of a mark.

I took her to the doctor in case it was staph or MRSA. It wasn't, but the doc says there is a lot of that going around and anytime you get recurring pimples on the butt of the kid, good thing to get it checked out. He says those (staph/mrsa) tend to be bigger, like boils and are drained. He also said that if you are potty training the kid, it's better to put diapers on them at night instead of pullups. I found that interesting because when I googled "toddler butt pimples" I found a forum where a lot of moms were having the exact same issue I was and pull ups seemed to make it worse or be the cause.

I did notice in preschool they don't help wipe. This leads to two things...a wet potty that the next kid sits on (ew! what's my daughter catching from these kids! what are they catching from HER!), and also the possibility of not the cleanest underwear for your kid. Doc said this could be caused by dampness in the underwear. I also realized that when I wipe her with wipes after going potty, I need to give her a bit more time to dry before putting panties on.

I was on the right track washing her with some antibacterial soap and putting neosporin on the zits to help clear them, which they did. He did say to stop the antibacterial soap (as bacteria can get resistant) and recommended I use a bleach bath 2 times this week for 5 minutes. Very strange to pour clorox in the bath with the kid! Also prescribed some antibac cream.

I googled bleach bath and found they did a study which determined it seems to help with eczema, which some of you may find interesting.

Anyway, hopes this helps someone in the future..I googled but didn't really find any solutions/answers to the problem that my kid was having. A lot of moms on forums seemed to note the problem, but never came back with answers. Amelia's butt is looking way better with no sign of any more coming at the moment.

 

[lili]

How's he doing Vesper?
I did notice in preschool they don't help wipe. This leads to two things...a wet potty that the next kid sits on (ew! what's my daughter catching from these kids! what are they catching from HER!).

This kinda makes me glad that J still wants to be in diaper.
You should have seen some of the stuff stuck on the toilet by the end of the day

 

[TravelingGal]

How's he doing Vesper?
I did notice in preschool they don't help wipe. This leads to two things...a wet potty that the next kid sits on (ew! what's my daughter catching from these kids! what are they catching from HER!).

This kinda makes me glad that J still wants to be in diaper.
You should have seen some of the stuff stuck on the toilet by the end of the day

Trust me lili, as much as it's nice not to have to clean poopy diapers, I STILL think diapers are easier (after almost a month of training now). If you're happy and she's happy, I say enjoy diapers!!!!!!!!!

 

[vespergirl]

Hi everyone,
I just wanted to come back with an update. We got him a Leapster Explorer that he could only play with on the potty, and he sat there for hours playing with it, but somehow still witholding his poo while sitting on the potty. So, we went to the pediatrician yesterday (after no poo since Saturday) and because he was so backed up, she said that that I should give him some laxatives or a suppository. We had been giving him Miralax all week, and he was still holding it, so we did the suppository last night. I made DH do it because Andrew was screaming that he didn't want it, and DH is the one that's being all militant about this. So, that obviously worked, he pooed in the potty a few minutes after it was inserted, but DH had to literally hold him down on the potty by force. However, after he pooed he felt much better, and said, "Thank you Daddy & Mommy for helping me poo on the potty." Then today I let him play with his bowling set that the "poo fairy" brought him. However, he still hasn't pooed today, so I'm not sure yet if he will poo on the potty again without being forced by laxatives.

The doctor told me that if he still resisted after that, he probably wasn't ready (even though he was fully potty trained & always went on the toilet without a problem before the baby came home). It has been such a struggle, that I want to put him back in Pull-ups (for the 5 mintues a day that he's pooing) if we're still having this agonizing issue on Monday. However, he hasn't asked for Pull-ups at all after we got rid of them, so I'm not sure that's a great idea, especially since he's not asking for them. DH is totally against it, but he only sees him for one hour a day on weekdays, so he's not dealing with the 13 hours a day of agony that I am. I told him that if he can get him through the worst of it this weekend, then we won't go back to Pull-ups for pooing, but I don't know if I can take another week of sitting with him in the bathroom 4 hours a day while trying to take care of a 6 month old at the same time

I'll let you know how it turns out by Monday ...

 

[TravelingGal]

Oh Vesper, hugs! I am so sorry this has been so hard on you and your son. I hope he doesn't keep holding it in.

And while I see where your DH is coming from, I totally agree that it's you who is dealing with it and he probably doesn't understand how agonizing this has been for you.

He'll get there...the doc may be right...he just might not be ready and there's nothing you can do about it.

 

[vespergirl]

Hi everyone, I just wanted to post an update. After 10 days Pull-up free, even my husband decided to throw in the towel. We only got Andrew to poo in the potty once, when we gave him a suppository. After that, he just continued to hold it, despite heavy doses of MIralax. We didn't leave the house for nearly a week, instead let him run around naked, but he would just either withold or poo in a corner, either on the floor or in his pants if he was dressed (he insists on pooing standing up, which I think is part of the problem). It's just so frustrating because he WAS totally potty trained before, with no issues, and he has been regressing for so long ...

I took him to the pediatrician, and she said that he was very backed up, but not constipated, but if he was still resisting after 10 days, we should just give him a Pullup because he was just continuing to withold and it wasn't healthy. When we told him he could go in a Pullup, he pooed 7 TIMES in one day. Now that we've been back to the Pullup routine this week, he just goes & puts on a Pullup when he needs to poo, stands in the bathroom & poos, then he comes to me to clean him up. I wipe him but I have been making him dump the poo in the toilet and dispose of the Pullup, which he doesn't enjoy. So, hopefully, he'll get tired of having to clean up & choose to poo in the potty again someday.

Also, on the advice of the ped, we have totally stopped talking about it, offering rewards, etc. - hopefully taking all pressure off & making it a non-issue will no longer make it a control issue for him, and he will start using the potty when he realizes he isn't getting any attention for it, either positive or negative.

I have to say that I'm fine with the Pullup arrangement for now, because it's much easier than watching him make himself sick & cleaning poo off him & my furniture a dozen times a day. It's amazing because he never has pee accidents, and stays dry through the night, but still refuses to poo in the toilet.

He trained himself the first time (just decided to do it one day and used the toilet consistently until the baby came) so I guess he's just going to have to decide to do it this time as well. We know that strong-arming him didn't work, which is amazing, because no one is more stubborn & consistent than my husband, except for our son I guess.

 

[TravelingGal]

I thought I'd update this thread as I know a lot of toddler moms are embarking on potty training.

Amelia was trained for days without a problem in Oct of 2010 (which I posted about on this thread). We decided to hold off on nighttime training for 2 reasons: 1) she was NEVER dry in the mornings) and 2) We were going on a long flight to Australia in August and I did not want to worry about accidents on the plane, or the toilet.

She was never dry after a nap either, but over the summer, we simply didn't give her liquid before a nap and put her to bed in panties. She really fought that one...EVERY day for a month she asked to wear a diaper, but the actual training didn't take too long...she could manage 2 hours dry after she had a few accidents...and those were always after she woke up from a nap. She was just so used to peeing while in bed!

The trip came and went (and backfired, btw since she didn't sleep as much as I would have liked and wanted to go to the toilet a fair bit on the plane!). Come November she still had NEVER had a dry diaper upon wake up. We still had leaks from time to time, even with a nighttime diaper. Everything I read pointed to the fact that you can begin nighttime training once they start waking up dry. We had nothing! But after hearing stories about friends of friends kids who were still in pull ups at age 7, I decided we would give nighttime training a shot, and then backtrack and try again at age 4 if it failed.

There's not much concrete helpful info out there on nighttime training, but our plan of attack was to make sure the mattress was protected and put her to bed in underwear. We would wake her up somewhere between 10-11pm and then at 3 am at first, to get her body "trained" to wake up to pee. First day went flawless. We woke her up, helped her go through the motions, and she stayed dry. We were hopeful!

Well, the next two weeks were the stuff of nightmares. Some days went perfectly. But most days, we'd miss the window and she peed at 9 pm (woke up crying), 1 am, and 4 am. We struggled with sleep deprivation and the poor thing was so upset, saying she'd try to do better as we changed sheets often through the night. (A few days in, we finally got wise and triplet sheeted the bed in layers, so all we had to do was STRIP a layer instead of changing the entire bed. Duh). We lost pillows in the war as she pissed all over them (they don't wash and dry well), and rearmed new pillows with waterproof sheets.

Finally, 2 weeks in, when things were looking slightly better, she pissed in her bed AFTER the 10 pm toilet piss. Then pissed again. And again (like 5 times in a night, including the 2 toilet wake ups). And even worse, managed to piss down the side of her bed where there was no waterproof protection so we were scrambling for something to use because she was pissing all over blankets too. TGuy was starting to lose it (he actually did get upset a couple of times over the course of those two weeks) and I decided I had to redraw the battle plans.

i.e., Retreat!

I went to BRU and got nighttime pull ups in princess pink. Amelia was thrilled to wear them. We decided to keep with the first wake up at 10 pm, but let her just go through the night so we could all get some much needed rest. The next morning I went to change her and she was...

Dry.

The dryness went for the next 4 days...something she was not able to achieve in the two weeks we tried to train her. I was left to sniff the pull ups, as I was sure they must have pee on them and I was missing something. I filled them with tap water to see if they were actually empty and to see what they were like if they had liquid in them. I was totally confused and wondered if maybe pull ups magically made my child not pee in the night.

Then, on day 5 of pull up wearing, it was wet. And on day 6, the same. And so it went on, and it seemed that my child was once again used to something taking care of the pee. She could pee and sleep happily and not wake up to a wet bed.

So, we rethought this again. We didn't want her to get used to wearing a pullup and peeing in them at will.

TGuy thought, aha! Put underwear on and THEN a pull up. Surely this will make her feel the wet and she'll wake up. At least then we'd only be changing HER and not the bed. First night, success!

Then night after night of wet undies and pullups. One morning, I hailed a success as her panties were dry, only to find out the pullups were WET. WTF???! She had peed early in the night and the panties had DRIED by morning...she had never woken up. ARGH!!!!

But an odd thing happened...she hated wet panties AND pull ups. She hated full pull ups that were hard to pull down in the morning when she went to go pee. I told her she had to wear the pull ups...she was having too many accidents. She begged not to wear them, and I told her, "I tell you what...you keep these dry for 5 nights and you can stop wearing them. She just said, OK momma, deal. By this time, we were not doing ANY wake ups...so she would have to go the 12 hours she slept not peeing.

Night 1, Dry. Night 2, Dry. Night 3, Dry. Night 4, Dry. Oh so hopeful! I didn't know what happened, but I was thrilled! Night 5, wet. Damn.

She was so bummed! I told her we'd have to go another 5 nights. 2 days in, she said, Please momma, I don't want to wear these. I can stay dry. I felt bad for her, and said, OK, I'll gear up to change sheets again. We'll see how this goes.

She hasn't wet since, and we are now 8 or so days in.

TGuy and I don't get it. How all of the sudden she could go 12 hours and hold it. Maybe something finally does click. The moral of the story is there was no method to our madness and I have no tips on how to night train. It was grueling! But I do believe that the training must have had SOMETHING to do with it and that if we didn't, she'd probably still be wetting diapers. Or maybe not, who knows.

But I'm calling it. She's nighttrained. She may have more accidents, or may not, but my baby has finally left the last of babydom behind.



(Oh, and I will say, if you have the constitution for it, nighttrain early!)

 

[Dreamer_D]

I was going to post about potty training but then Hunter figured it out

We waited until Hunter was about 2.5 to work on potty training. I'll be honest, his daycare really got him trained for the most part and told us he seemed ready! We started out just using pull ups and taking him to the potty about every hour.

The first big stumbling block for us was his refusal to go to the potty when we wanted him to. We tried stickers, bribes, a chart with stars. Our son is just too stuborn. We did not want potty training to be a battle, so we basically just tried not to push it, if he refused he refused, but he stayed in the pull ups. We finally figured out his "commodity" and we would tell him "You can take your pants and diaper off IF you go potty!" He went then. But he still doesn't wear pants around the house

When he could go on the toilet and *would go* when asked -- this took about three weeks to a month, he is very independent -- then we took off the pull ups and took him to the potty at least every 1.5 hours. If he went, great, if he did not go, then we took him back 10 minutes later. Not too many accidents really. It was about two or three months before we could just 100% trust him to tell us when he needed to go potty. Now he rarely has an accident. He has not regularly worn diapers since about a month or so into the training.

He wears a pull up for naps and a diaper at night. We will likely stop the nap diaper soon since we wakes dry a lot of the time.

So he was basically pee porrty trained for a long time, but only has been poop potty trained for about five days!

I was just about to post -- "HOw the heck do I get my son to poop on the potty!" when one day he just agreed to do it. For months we would ask him if he wanted to try the potty, but he would insist on a pull up and would go into his room and do his business. Every time we would suggest he try the potty, but never pushed it. Then he started going into the bathroom to poop, still in a diaper. Then one day, no clue why, when we asked if he wanted to poop on the potty he said yes! He read a book nd sang songs and there it was.

So all told, it took about four months before he would poop on the potty. So now I consider him "toilet trained" at 34 months old, because we can trust him and we only use diapers at nap and night time. He is a really big peer, so we will leave the nighttime for a while. Nap time is next!

 

[TravelingGal]

That's awesome Dreamer!

I wanted to hear more nighttime stories, as I didn't have a lot to go on. It was harder for us because unlike most kids, Amelia never woke up dry from overnight. Everyone else's kids seem to naturally just do this. So we were clueless if we should take her lead, or attempt to see if we could change things. I still have not heard of anyone else trying night training if the kid was never dry leading up to it.

Ah well, whatever works, I think is the bottom line for potty training!

 

[Dreamer_D]

That's awesome Dreamer!

I wanted to hear more nighttime stories, as I didn't have a lot to go on. It was harder for us because unlike most kids, Amelia never woke up dry from overnight. Everyone else's kids seem to naturally just do this. So we were clueless if we should take her lead, or attempt to see if we could change things. I still have not heard of anyone else trying night training if the kid was never dry leading up to it.

Ah well, whatever works, I think is the bottom line for potty training!

When the time comes I will likely read your posts and seek advice more. Hunter has always beed a HUGE night time peer, and a huge milk drinker. Even as an infant he wore nighttime diapers TWO SIZES bigger than he wore in the day! I think nighttime will be a while off, but I am okay with that.

Vesper I would be interested to hear the outcome of your potty trials! I admit, reading it now, I would have let him use a pull up all along. Eventually he would have gotten over it and wanted to use the potty again. So I think the stage you were at towards the end is a good no-stress way to approach it. But I would love to hear how it is going now!

 

[TravelingGal]

That's awesome Dreamer!

I wanted to hear more nighttime stories, as I didn't have a lot to go on. It was harder for us because unlike most kids, Amelia never woke up dry from overnight. Everyone else's kids seem to naturally just do this. So we were clueless if we should take her lead, or attempt to see if we could change things. I still have not heard of anyone else trying night training if the kid was never dry leading up to it.

Ah well, whatever works, I think is the bottom line for potty training!

When the time comes I will likely read your posts and seek advice more. Hunter has always beed a HUGE night time peer, and a huge milk drinker. Even as an infant he wore nighttime diapers TWO SIZES bigger than he wore in the day! I think nighttime will be a while off, but I am okay with that.

Vesper I would be interested to hear the outcome of your potty trials! I admit, reading it now, I would have let him use a pull up all along. Eventually he would have gotten over it and wanted to use the potty again. So I think the stage you were at towards the end is a good no-stress way to approach it. But I would love to hear how it is going now!

Dreamer, Amelia was the same. We curbed evening fluids a long time ago, but it simply did not help. She'd pee several times a night, regardless. Honestly, I was at a loss as to why my child never had a single wake up dry - either after a nap or nighttime sleep.

 

[MustangGal]

We're in the middle of the poop war right now. Kyle will stay dry in undies even through naps, but has only pooped in the potty 3 times in the last 5 months we've been working on it. His day care isn't helping at all, which I think is just drawing it out longer. 2 months until he starts preschool, and he has to be potty trained. I'm pretty sure he's holding it in, but he also either doesn't recognize when it's coming, or ignores it. We've started giving him prune juice and grapes to make sure it's flowing out the other end better, but still no luck. I'm going to try some new strategies I found via Dr. Google, I'll re post if any work!