Third time's a Charm!

When I was 7 months pregnant with Lily, Ty and I decided to attempt potty training Crystal in hopes that we wouldn't have 2 kids in diapers - not to mention the money we'd save. So I googled (side note: (I know how much you love my side notes :D) Chrome Browser's spell check doesn't think "googled" is a word; I think it should) "potty training" to see what I came up with. Nothing. Okay so there was something - TOO MUCH of something actually. SO I read article after article, they all had COMPLETELY different strategies ... most of which told me I was going to ruin my child's life if I trained her before she was 3 years old! Really? Ruin her life? I was potty trained at 2 years old. My life wasn't ruined. I don't remember being traumatized by the experience at all... okay okay ... I don't remember the experience at all, but it obviously didn't ruin my life.

Needless to say I was a bit overwhelmed and had NO idea what I was doing. Naturally I turned to my mom. Her response was, "Well I don't know how I did it. All I remember is it took lots of patience." Okay well patience is not my strong suit, but I was sure the prospect of no more diapers would help me through it. I still had no set strategy on HOW to do it though. So I thought about the stuff I had read. ALL of them agreed that Pull Ups were useless, so I went and bought LOTS AND LOTS of underwear for her. Some said to make it a party, so I made cupcakes, wrapped her underwear like a present, bought her a potty chair, bought stickers and printed a potty chart, bought treats to bribe her with :D, and I thought I was good to go!

The big day came! She opened the underwear, threw away her diapers (okay pretended to throw away her diapers ... those cost $ you know!), put on her underwear and celebrated with a cupcake! Then the day went down hill from there... it was a nightmare ... she was upset because that underwear was NOT holding her pee and she was getting all wet! And why sit on the chair with a hole in it ... that's not comfy! The one time she did pee in the potty chair, we were so excited for her that we scared her and she almost cried ... lol ... it didn't go well. We were also putting her in a diaper during naps and at night because - well frankly - we were stupid and didn't know what we were doing ... lol.

So the next day, Crystal just simply DIDN'T pee. She held her pee till naptime when we put a diaper on and then again till bedime. REALLY?!? Now I'm thinking ... she's ready to be potty trained if she can hold it THAT LONG, so what am I doing wrong?!?! We went on like this for 5 days with very little success, in fact she was just getting worse, refusing to wear underwear at all, just peeing everywhere and walking away like nothing happened, AND there was NO way she was gonna sit on that chair ANYMORE! So we decided we were obviously doing something wrong and thought we'd better stop before we did ruin her life like the articles said we would ... lol.

A month or two later, just before Lily was born we thought we'd try it one more time. She was 2 now and could communicate with us TONS better than before so we thought she might pick up on it better. Lets just say it didn't work as well as we'd hoped. I think we only lasted 1 day before we gave up (this was more our lack of motivation ... remember I was nearly 9 months pregnant and not only emotional but tired). She was as stubborn as ever about it. At this point she knew what we wanted her to do, but she just didn't have any interest in doing it.

So fast forward 6 months to a few weeks ago. Ty's cousin, Emily, posts on Facebook that her 2 year old is potty trained and it only took 3 days! When I read this I WANTED her secret more than anything! You have to realize that at this point I had decided it might be easier just to teach Crystal how to change her own diaper that to teach her to use the toilet... LOL! This is what Emily sent me: 3 Day Potty Training. She said not only had she had success with it, but she knew other people who had done it too. I had nothing to lose. So I read the book, and though it was similar to what we had tried in the past, it pointed out several vital things we had been doing VERY wrong!

This was IT! NO going back! Third times a charm right!?!?! So we started out again... I bought more underwear (I thought she'd wear it if it had her favorite disney characters, mickey and minnie, on them), I bought more treats, and finally I set aside 3 days for JUST her and no distractions!

Day 1:She 'threw away' the diapers ... again. We put on her Minnie underwear after a small fight and a successful chocolate cupcake distraction ;D. And that was it! We reminded her hundreds of times to tell us if she needed to go and watched her EVER SO CLOSELY so we could get her to the toilet in time! The only accident she had all day was at naptime.

Night 1: A Nightmare for ALL of us. 6 pairs of underwear. 5 pj bottoms. 4 sets of sheets. (I'm just glad she's in a toddler bed with a crib mattress so it wasn't too hard to change and clean up!)

Day 2: 2 partial accidents (She stopped it as soon as she realized what was happening). She did have a full on accident during her nap again...

Night 2: I thought we had a breakthrough when she CALLED for me so she could go potty after I put her in bed. She was still dry at 4 am but was very wet when I woke her in the morning.

Day 3: She wore the same pair of underwear ALL day long! She even stayed dry during her nap but she only slept for 20 minutes so I don't know that it counted. lol. We even started relaxing on following her around and watching her every moment because she was getting so good at letting us know when she needed to go!

Night 3: Had to change the sheets 2 times. Once @ 1am. Once in the morning.

Today we are feeling pretty confident that she is day trained. We were out all day today and didn't have any accidents! We are however concerned about her inability to stay dry while sleeping. She still doesn't wake up when she needs to go, she just sleeps through it till its too late. I'm feeling very much against putting a diaper or pull up on her because I don't want her to start holding it till she has a diaper on like she was before. I think we are going to give the nighttime training another week or so and see how she does. I'm hoping as she gets used to going to the bathroom during the day that she'll start remembering while asleep that its not okay to just go whenever she wants anymore.

I can't tell you how happy I am that this 3 day program was so successful. I would suggest it to ANYONE who's thinking about potty training a child soon. The author of the book suggests 22 months is the perfect age to begin training (it is a lot of work and you go through a lot of underwear in 3 days but to have NO diapers at 22 months! Wouldn't that be wonderful!?!:D). I wish more than anything that we had had this book the first time we tried training her, it would have saved us all quite a bit of stress and frustration - not to mention $ on diapers :D!