The idea of doing some early potty training with Little Deer hadn’t really occurred to me until a few months ago. We had just moved to our new house in Monterey, and the long car ride coupled with a reaction to something in my diet left her with a really bad diaper rash. Nothing seemed to be working, so I eventually let her spend each morning without a diaper in hopes the rash would soon clear up (the Bare Bottom Bandit we called her!). As we worked to get rid of her diaper rash, I started to notice a pattern. After she woke up, we’d nurse, I’d take off her diaper, then let her crawl around the kitchen naked while I prepared breakfast. Like clockwork, within about two minutes of being set down on the kitchen floor, she would pee. Everywhere.

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After a few days of this, it finally clicked. We should get her a potty! Now obviously Little Deer was way too young to potty train, but why not work it into our routine and give her a little practice? Better to have her pee in her potty than on the kitchen floor, right? I decided to order her a potty that day. I had heard good things about this one by BabyBjorn, so I thought we would give it a try. I liked that it was simple, white, and had a high back.

After a little googling and reading a couple of great posts on Pinterest about pre-potty training tips for babies, I was ready. Once LD’s potty came, we got right down to it. And you know what? So far it’s been great! Though I read many tips and tricks, I wanted to keep it simple, so I picked three main things to work on with LD. This is what our pre-potty training plan has entailed:

1. Incorporating the potty into our routine: Every morning after nursing her, I take off her nighttime diaper, carry her into our bathroom, and set her on her potty. She’s obsessed with her blankie and hippo right now, so they’ll usually come too. Within about 30 seconds of her being set on the potty, she’ll start to pee. I’ll praise her and she’ll get a huge smile on her face. After that we brush her teeth while she’s still sitting on the potty. When we’re all done and I pick her up, she often points back at the potty as if to say, “Look at that mom, I did it!” And I’ll say “Yup, there’s your pee pee. Good job baby!” Then I’ll get her changed and ready for the day, and that’s that! Easy peasy. We do this every morning, and she’ll probably go about 75% of the time. It’s only an extra couple of minutes, and I definitely don’t mind doing it. I also think this is great because it gets her comfortable with the potty. Though some kids get really excited with the introduction of a new potty, I know others that have gotten scared. She likes sitting on her potty, and when the time comes to use it throughout the day, I think she’ll do just fine.

2. Assigning names to potty activities: When LD starts to pee, I say “You’re going pee pee, good job! Good pee pee!” Though it feels a little silly, I think it’s important that she understands and has a corresponding word for her action. That way, once she’s older and talking, it will be a familiar word that she can use to communicate with me. Though she hasn’t ever pooped on the potty, it’s pretty obvious when she’s going (she’ll stop whatever she’s doing and concentrate, hard). When I notice her doing that, I’ll say “You’re going poo poo. Good poo poo baby.” Again, it may seem like a bit much, but I think it’ll definitely be a good thing later down the road. Besides helping her understand the words for her actions, I also think doing this helps draw attention to the sensation she’s feeling when she goes. When I say “pee pee” now, I notice that she’ll actually look down as she’s going which is pretty neat.

3. Having her watch as I go potty: I’ll try and bring LD in the bathroom with me a couple of times a day. As I go to the bathroom, I’ll use our words to explain what I’m doing, “Look, mommy’s going pee pee too!” I think it helps reinforce our new potty words and normalizes it all. I know too that soon she’ll be wanting to mimic what I’m doing. So if she wants to be a big girl and go potty like me then hey, that works for me!

I think those three things are pretty easy additions to our routine, and I truly think they’ll set us up for an easier potty training experience down the road. From the couple of blog posts I’ve read by other moms who have done similar things with their children, it has seemed to help immensely.

Now that we’ve been doing this for a few months, after her first birthday I’m hoping to add a few more things to our routine. I’m thinking about doing a potty session after her afternoon nap to see if that’s a good time for her to go. I think when I see her trying to poop during the day, I might try and pop her on the potty (leaving her diaper on) so she associates that feeling with going and sitting on her potty. And I might let her run around and be the Bare Bottom Bandit a little more often so that she continues to notice when she’s going to the bathroom.

But yes, for now I think we’ve got a good routine in place! Though I don’t expect potty training to be a snap, I do think that doing these couple of things on a daily basis will help ease the transition out of diapers. We will see in time!

Did you do any kind of pre-potty training?