Potty Update

"Hey! In the name of science, could we get an update about how this method has worked as Lucia transitioned into toddlerhood? Thanks, love the blog!"

Yes, of course!

This question came in yesterday which, coincidentally, was Lucia's very first dry day ever!

That means that yesterday, at the age of 21 months, Lucia made it through an entire day in the same pair of dry, clean cotton underwear, and she wore her nap diaper to bed at night because it was still dry when she woke up.  She went to the potty many times. Most of those times, I asked her if she had to go. I generally trust whatever she tells me for the answer. When it is potty time, I have to accompany her and remove her underwear, as she can not do it herself.  We had a party last weekend at which she walked up to the porch, sat on her little potty, and wet the underwear that was still on her bottom.  A for effort, Lucia!

Because clothing is the recent challenge, Lucia went most of the month of August buck naked.  Last week was spent changing lots and lots of underwear to get her used to the idea that we do not treat undies exactly the same as a diaper.  She is getting the idea.  

For those who check in for the cute pics, you can bail now.




For those interested in implementation, here's a rough outline of the entire process from start to now:

• Starting day 1: Make a "Psssss" sound in Lucia's ear every time I hear her pooping.
• 2 weeks:  After every feeding, remove diaper, hold her over it, and cue her with "Pssss!"  She pees/poops on command SOME of the time  Maybe half the time.  It's enough to keep me interested in this project. She pees and poops in her diaper a lot of times outside of this schedule, too, so we are catching maybe 30-40% of her poops.
• 2 months: more than half of her poops are on command at our diaper changes now.  But she's still pooping in her diaper every day, too.  When I hear it, I make the noise to keep the association strong.
• 5 months: Lucia poops almost exclusively in the potty now.  By this age, I'm not holding her over her diaper all the time for pooping.  I'm sitting backwards on the grownup toilet with her propped up between my legs.
• 8 months: She has gone a couple of months without a single poopy diaper!  This isn't the end of pooping in her diaper, but after this point, when she poops in her diaper it's generally because she's teething or sick or too tired.  It happens, on average, once or twice a month.
• 18 months:  Lucia starts to tell me when she needs to go potty.  She does this very reliably for poop.  She can hold it for a few minutes, but not indefinitely, so accidents are rare.  Maybe once a month.  She sometimes even tells me when she has to pee, but this is less reliable.  She pees in the potty many times a day, and pees in her diaper many times a day, too -- about 50/50%.
• 20 months: No-pants month!  She does very well without pants.  Most days, she has no accidents.  A couple of times a week she'll have an off day and there are puddles every half hour.  Don't know what's up with that. 
• 21 months: Training into underwear.  Spent one week changing wet undies over and over and over again, but it has helped.  Now she usually tells me when she has to pee.

I am quite happy with the way it has all turned out.  It isn't magic.  It's not like she was totally and completely done with diapers really super young, and I think it probably took up about the same amount of my time as diapering would have.  I spend a lot of minutes holding my kid over a potty instead of wiping shit from her crevices -- I view that as a favorable trade.  I have complete confidence that she will be an underwear kid by the time she turns 2.  That's a full six months fewer diapers than Elsie used.

I don't think that you could do this if you worked a lot, unless you had a committed nanny.  I didn't get a lot of support from my family on this project.  They might object to that characterization, but in my mind, support would be if my family learned about about and actively participating in the training.  Instead I got a skeptical tolerance, and a whole lot of... "But she only goes for YOU!"  Which is a self-fulfilling prophecy.   

If I had another child (don't hold your breath, Hub!) I would likely use infant potty training again, but I appreciate that it isn't for everybody, and it isn't perfect.  It has been a rather large effort. If you value it the way I do, then it's worth a try.