I haven’t written a potty-training post in about a year and a half. Thankfully we have come far enough for me to consider Little Piñata officially potty-trained. (You’d assume so after 1.5 years, right? But, actually this officialness is quite new!)

First of all, he did amazing with going #1 on the potty from the get-go. By the 2nd day of the “3 day potty-training boot camp” he pretty much had the concept down. We had started taking him to the potty every 30 minutes, but within a few days it got spread out to every hour, and after a couple of weeks, I only had to remind him before and after transitions, like meals or outings. We stayed in this phase for at least 6 months. When he was 2.5 he started going on his own and recognizing all by himself when he had to go and not needing (or wanting) any help. And we have had so few accidents in this year and a half that I can’t even remember a single one!

However, going #2 has been quite another story! Within weeks he had changed his body’s rhythm to only go #2 during naptime and bedtime, which I didn’t mind since he was always wearing a diaper then. I read that this happened to a lot of kids, so I didn’t worry about it. But, then he turned 3 and I realized he had been doing this same thing for almost a year and I got a bit concerned.

I talked to our pediatrician about it and she suggested that we just get rid of the diaper/pull-up at naptime and that that would kind of “force” him to go during the day on the toilet. But, it didn’t work at all. All we ended up with were completely soaked sheets and mattress cover and #2 was held all the way to bedtime. So, we added prunes or prune juice to his breastfast each day. The holding continued (with pee accidents every naptime) and then we just had really messy diapers at night. I quickly realized this wasn’t working, and I started thinking that this whole process might be contributing to unhealthy, chronic holding, so we put him in a diaper for naps again.

Our pediatrician also recommended Magnesium Citrate for him, to helpfully get his bowel movements to be soft enough that he could no longer hold them in. Oye. I think he went on the potty one time in the one week period that we tried this. And the diapers only got messier. At this point I gave up. I just stopped. I decided he wouldn’t still need to wear a diaper to Kindergarten, so we cut out the prunes, all the promised rewards that just weren’t working (a movie! a dump truck! candy! popcorn! anything you want!).

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And wouldn’t you know? Just a couple of weeks later while we were sitting at dinner he told us he had to go “poo-poo.” I had never moved that fast in my life. I scooped him up and put him on the potty and he went! We had a huge celebration! We called every single relative to celebrate, gave him candy, and let him watch a movie with popcorn and candy. I held back no reward!  We then went to the used bookstore and bought every single Berenstain Bears book they had in paperback and set them all up on the piano. For every time he went #2 on the potty he got a new book. This strategy was the first that worked like a charm. He then started using the potty for #2 on a regular basis! I thought we had crossed the hurdle.

And then we went on vacation. Whomp, whomp.

He had a major regression while we were at the beach for almost 2 weeks and went back to the exact same nap/bedtime issue as before. I couldn’t really blame him though. Who wants to leave the beach to go to the bathroom?  This regression lasted a couple of months, likely exacerbated with the emotional stress that came along with us selling our house and moving to a new one.

But, thankfully, within a few weeks of being in the new house and me remembering the importance of just letting it go for awhile, he got back into his routine of listening to his body and going to the bathroom by himself. And in the past week he has started waking up dry from nap, so he is even without a pull-up for naptime now. Wahoo!

He is still in pull-ups at night because I have zero expectation of him staying dry overnight. He wakes up dry about 50% of the time. But, that other 50% of the time he’s totally soaked. He is such a deep sleeper and I prefer good sleep to night-time training at this point.

On this side of the potty-training hurdle I feel like it wasn’t as bad as people told me it would be. But, while I was in it, I was so distraught and thought he would just never go #2 on the potty. But, once he was mature enough and really ready, he just went on his own. I think if there’s one thing I will try to tell myself when we get around to potty-training Sweet P is that she really will go when she’s ready. And if she isn’t ready and I push it, I will just drive myself crazy. Of course, everyone gave me this advice at the time, but it’s always so difficult to follow good advice when you’re in the midst of feeling frustrated. But to those of you dealing with the potty-training monster I promise you it’s true!  They really will go when they are ready and so if at all possible, take a deep breath and “let it go.”