Potty Training!

Hopefully, I'm not jinxing ourselves when I say:

Cole is officially potty trained!

So here's how we did it.

Several months ago, we bought a couple of potties to have around the house, so Cole could get used to them.  We talked up the potty a lot, telling him about how big boys use the potty and how Daddy does too.  We really wanted a no-pressure kind of situation - since we cloth diaper, it's not like we were in a hurry to get him out of diapers to save money!  However, he had started to tell us when his diaper was wet and ask to be changed, so I knew that was a good time to get things going.

Then one random day in June, Cole sat on the potty (the big one!) and went in it!  So...ready or not, potty training here we came!  We started out strong, but by the end of the week Cole was refusing flat out to sit on the potty and try to go.  So I thought I'd put his diapers back on and give it a break for a week or two, then try again with some different techniques.  Well, then he got the flu.  And then I was pregnant and throwing up every ten minutes (yeah.  potty training and nausea just. don't. mix.). And then we had a vacation coming up.  And then I had a D&C.  And THEN we went on a five hour flight to PA - and I was SO not going risk trying to rush a newly-potty trained child to a teeny tiny airplane bathroom! 

Yeah.  So the potty training got put off for a while.  But I decided the third week in September was THE week to start.  I asked around and did some research about techniques to use - a friend HIGHLY recommended the Lora Jensen potty training method.  It's a short ebook that you download after you purchase and read right on your computer (I read it in about 10 mins - short and easy!).  Most of her techniques are VERY straightforward and basic common sense (which I loved) - but the real value is that you can directly email her any questions and she will respond quickly to you.

Here's the basics of her 3-day potty training method:

1. First, you put your child in undies.  No pull-ups (I love this.  I am so anti pull-up).  The first day, you have your child check their undies frequently to see if they are dry and praise them if they are.
2. You stay home and stick to your child like glue to make sure you can catch them in action if they are starting to have an accident and rush them to the potty if they are.
3. Lots and lots of praise (you can choose if you want to do physical rewards at all) when the child goes in the potty.
4. Most importantly, you never ask your child, "Do you need to go to the potty?" or take them to the potty if they don't have to go.  The key is telling your child, "Tell me when you need to go potty, ok?" I love how this put the ownership into Cole's hands, so he isn't relying on me to remind him to go, but on himself to remember to go and to pay attention to his own body.

So according to her, the potty training should only take 3 days.  Now, Cole got the hang of pee really quick...but he wasn't fully potty trained for about two weeks.  Here's some of the tricks that worked for us:

1. The first few days when we would check Cole's undies to see if they were dry (which was about every ten minutes), Cole would get a sticker and lots of praise.  The next couple of days, he got a sticker when he went in the potty (and LOTS of praise).  I liked how we had a lot of opportunities for positive reinforcement.
2. Going poo for Cole was the hardest part.  I didn't want to use a crazy reward system like with toys (he has SO MANY already) or food (I don't want to use food as a reward ever), but we were desperate to get him to go poo on the potty just once.  I knew once he did one time, we would be able to get him to do it again.  So I bought him a book, put it up on the kitchen table, and told him that as soon as he went poo in the potty, we would read it.  Well, it still took a few days - but as soon as he did it, he immediately said, "NEW BOOK! READ!" - so it worked as an incentive!
3. The biggest realization I had was to do everything in stages, with no expectations to get the hang of everything immediately.  First, we conquered peeing in the potty, then poo, then staying dry at naptime, then at nighttime, then teaching Cole to take off his own pants and undies, etc.  The best way to give Cole confidence was to slowly help him become more and more independent with the whole process, not to do it all at once.
4. The second biggest realization I had was to DO WHAT WORKS FOR you/your child individually.  We decided that Cole's sleep was the number one most important thing, and that even though the book recommended potty training at night at the same time (by waking your child up to make them pee), we knew that Cole (and I!) don't do well with not enough/interrupted sleep.  So, we bought some pull-ups ("nighttime undies", we tell Cole) for night.  Turns out he didn't need them, but it was still tailoring what was most important for us.
5. The only difficulty we had with it was with sleep.  Holy cow...it was a rough few weeks.  Between the stress of learning such a big new skill and deciding (on his own!) to potty train himself at night too, Cole reverted back to some pretty bad sleep habits.  He wakes himself up when he needs to pee at night (which means he wakes me up to help him!) and that interrupted sleep is hard on all of us.  Hopefully things will eventually get a bit smoother with that side of things.  I've never met a child who is night-trained the same time as day trained!

So there you have it.  Potty training wasn't as stressful and frustrating as I thought it would be - but I do have to admit that as I did my last laundry load of diapers last week and packed them away till the next babe comes along, I was equal parts sad and excited.  I never minded changing Cole's diapers, and potty training was one more way my baby was proving to me that he wasn't any part baby anymore!  But at the same time, I am so excited for him to take one more step on the road to independence - and proud that I'm a good enough mom to know when to let go of his babyhood.