According to my mother, I was speaking full sentences and potty trained by the time I was fifteen months old.  While I can’t say for certain if she’s actually telling the truth, and I clearly don’t remember any of this, my entire family agrees with her that I was indeed talking and potty trained at a very young age.  Apparently my husband was as well.  With Chloe reaching her other milestones so quickly, we thought for sure she’d be easy to potty train.  We looked up a potty training readiness checklist and realized that Chloe met all of the criteria at fourteen months old which really, really surprised us.  Fourteen months seemed so young to potty train, but my mom held firm that I was out of diapers at fifteen months. So we bought Chloe a potty chair and decided to see what would happen, thinking that this would be so easy!

We were so, so wrong.

You messin’ with me?!

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Chloe has been showing some of the physical and behavioral signs for many months now.  She’s been walking since she was 9 months old and running steadily since 11 months.  She goes several hours between needing a diaper change and has been able to dress herself since her first birthday. We keep her potty chair in our bathroom, and she likes to sit on her potty while I go to the bathroom too.  And, most noticeably, she absolutely hates the feeling of a wet or dirty diaper. Some bees commented on my diaper bag post asking why I carry so many diapers. Part of the reason is because Chloe is prone to urinary tract infections so we are quick to change her when she is wet or dirty.  The other reason is because she loathes being wet/dirty, and starting a few months ago, she started taking her diaper off if we didn’t get to her quick enough.  We go through so many diapers a day simply because she doesn’t like the feeling of being wet!

Despite all of the above, Chloe hasn’t been as easy to potty train as we thought she’d be.  She likes being a big girl, though, and runs to the bathroom almost every time she has to go potty.  She tells us while she’s peeing and rips off her diaper, so sometimes we have accidents.  The few times we do make it to the potty in time we make a huge deal out of her accomplishment, but right now her going in the potty isn’t very consistent.  Some days, going on the potty isn’t even on Chloe’s radar and she doesn’t step foot in the bathroom. We’re cool with that, too.  We discussed potty training with our pediatrician and she gave us the following advice: even though Chloe is showing all the signs of being ready, given her history of UTIs and her being more prone to them until she’s about three years of age, we shouldn’t push potty training.  Now that Chloe has more of an attention span, the concern is that she’ll purposefully hold her urine in so she can play a little bit longer instead of emptying her bladder, which would cause an infection.

Also, sometimes this happens.  Ugh.

Chloe is only 20 months old so we aren’t in a huge hurry to potty train her, but boy, we’d love to get rid of the diapers (and the monthly expense!).  We’re going to follow our pediatricians advice and take a slower pace toward this milestone.

When did you start potty training your LO?