Thursday, April 12, 2012

Adventures in potty training

  Ceaghan is 2 1/2 now and he is starting to potty train. I will be honest, this makes me extremely excited.  For a while it didn't seem like he "got it" and by that I mean that he didnt understand that you are supposed to go on the potty. That isn't his fault of course because when we choose to use diapers instead of practicing EC "elimination communication", we are in a sense teaching our babies that the diaper is their potty. Then once we feel they are old enough, we have to shake up their entire world and reteach them where is the right spot to potty. Also when practicing elimination communication your baby learns to communicate their needs unlike a diaper trained baby who must learn when they need to go and how to express that. Now that I am just learning about elimination communication I am starting to question my GIANT cloth diaper stash and wishing I would have practiced this with Ceaghan. Because of that I am going to do it part of the time for Cesilee.(that's a whole other blog post)
   Anyway we have started potty training by having him be completely naked while at home. We put a little potty in the living room and he goes and sits on it when he feels the need to. When he pee'd for the first time in the little potty we made it a huge deal. We gave high fives, hugs and kisses and praised him. He now uses the potty every time he has to go while naked at home and every time he does we celebrate. He also suddenly is holding his urine at night and during naps! We put a diaper on him anyway just in case, but we usually wake up to a dry diaper and he unloads it all in the potty.
  The next step will be testing out how he does with undies on or training underwear. I am concerned that having something close to his skin will make him think its okay to go, since he was trained that way with the diapers. Also he doesn't tell me right now when he has to go. He finds the potty himself and goes. Obviously this is an issue because he will need to let me know when he has to go when he isn't naked and at home, so that I can get him to a toilet. I actually have been surprised how much easier this has been than what we had thought. I am optimistic that he will be potty trained completely in around a month from now. We plan to keep night trainers on him for awhile though to combat any accidents. Also I still am facing many unknowns, like how he will do while we are out, if he will still hold his bladder while wearing underwear and how fast he can learn to tell me when he has to go. I will be honest, I am dreaming about half the diapers to wash and not spraying toddler poop for awhile!  

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