Donovan has been going pee on the potty for many many many months now but with no further signs that he wants to ever stop pooping and peeing in a diaper. When we were looking at different daycares to send him I started to think about how close he is getting to 3 yrs old and how that was always my goal to have him potty trained by then. So on Friday Jan 6th, on a whim, I asked Donovan if he wanted to try wearing underwear that day and he eagerly agreed. Win number one. I had him pee, then put his undies on and potty training was underway! (I was home by myself with both him and Reese, who was super crabby and clingy so what possessed me to think this was a good idea is beyond me). I didn't really have a plan, just try to get him to pee every hour and put a diaper on him for his nap. 20 minutes later, first accident. 20 minutes after that, second accident. So far, not so good. In the past when we had tried underwear and he had an accident we went straight to the diaper but I was determined to see this experiment through at least until the afternoon so I kept putting underwear back on. The first accident was a lot, the second barely any and the rest of the day, dry!!!!!! So he learned like I hoped he would, that it feels yucky to be wet. Fast forward to today and I would say we are doing pretty good overall!
He still wears a diaper at night and naps, except for 2 nights ago and the past 2 days during naps. Both naps were monster ones and he was dry for both but 2 nights ago when he refused to put a diaper on he peed a ton in the bed, but not til 5am so kind of a win I guess. About 50% of the time his diaper is dry in the morning but it is dry after naps about 98% of the time, which is wonderful. He is doing much better about telling us when he has to pee, but originally he wasn't telling us at all so anything is better than nothing. He doesn't have pee accidents very often, unless we let him go a long time between potty breaks without asking if he needs to go, or if we are doing something really fun and different, like when we were going to check out different schools.
Poop on the other hand, now that is a doozy. He has gone poop on the potty multiple times but usually only after he has gone in his underwear a little. And instead of pooping everyday, he goes every other so now that "other" day you have to be on major high alert. Today for instance was one of those days. Now he knows he needs to tell us when he has to poop, so he does, and we RUN to the potty, and we sit. And sit. And sit. He gets stage fright. If I had to estimate I would say we spent close to an hour and a half total today just sitting on the potty, waiting for the poop to come. He had two minuscule accidents with poop tonight too so I know he really had to go but he would just clam (or clamp) up. And tomorrow is his first day of school so I was getting sweaty just thinking that I was going to drop this ticking time bomb off with them and hope that when I picked him up at night that they didn't tell us that we were not welcome to come back and also, they had never seen that much poop come out of one child. I got so desperate that, against my better judgement, I offered to put him in a regular diaper so he could just poop in there. He agreed but then no poop. So right before bed he always pees, and instead he said "I have to poop". Well duh but we had heard that before. 20 minutes later, he was still on the potty and he would occasionally stand up and say "I feel bad" and I felt so bad for him. I know he was hurting but he just could not get it to work out. We were trying everything, reading "Everyone Poops", promising toys, I even let him ea a kit kat thinking that might put him over the edge. Then suddenly, about 30 minutes in, he produced. A man sized production. He was so cute he said "My tummy doesn't hurt anymore!" as soon as it was over. And I felt the weight of a thousand potty training kids, lift of my shoulders when I realized we might not have a massive accident tomorrow at day care and get kicked out.
All in all though I would say he is doing very good (other than poop). He is so proud of himself, loves that he wears "underwears" or "undies" as he will call them. Sometimes he requests to run around in only his underwear, and we let him. When we ask him how he is doing or if he needs to go pee and he doesn't he tells us, "No, I'm doing pretty good." For deciding to see if we could potty train him on a whim, having done no research, I am pretty proud of us. Now if only we can learn from our poop experience tonight and have more successes like that.
So sweet!
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