A Potty Update

Now that Lucy is 11 months old, I thought I would share how potty training is going. Great! No, really! I've been pretty irregular because we’ve been sick so I’m really pleased at how well Lucy has picked up on. I’m sure she would be doing even better if I had been more consistent but such is life.

She currently goes almost every morning right after she wakes up (~90%) and pretty consistently after naps as well (~60%). Not surprisingly, those are the three times that I am always consistent about having her sit. I also let her sit between old and new diapers if she wants to (and she normally does, she loves to sit on that thing :-) but they don’t normally  “produce.”

Nap time pottying is actually my favorite because I have her sit before her naps and put her in a new diaper and even if she has taken a two hour nap she is typically dry afterwards so I get to put the same diaper back on!  The only reason we are still only at 60% is that she if she doesn’t sleep quite long enough she wakes up cranky and clingy so I don’t push it even though I know if I had her sit down on the potty she would go. I would  change a extra diaper than have her associate the potty with crankiness and crying. My mantra is “the process not the product.”

But even more than the numbers show, we have made progress with the concept. When we first started, I wasn’t sure if it was just coincidence or not but I am 100% certain that she gets the concept now. Even if it takes me 5 minutes or so after she wakes up to get her to the potty, she will hold it and she normally goes as soon as we sit her down, then she smiles when I say “Good job.” And once when I didn’t feel so good, I just went to the bathroom to change her and wasn’t going to bother about the potty but she pointed to it so I let her try and she went!

As for #2, she’s gone twice on her own but I haven’t done much else to speed that along. I’ve read two books, one said to try and catch them in the middle of pooping and get them to the potty to finish in order to help them make the connection while the other said to just talk to them and tell them what they are doing then change them right away. I think the first approach is probably a better one but I’m still taking the latter for now. Lucy is very inconsistent about how much she eats so, let me put this delicately, the output is sometimes “big kid like” and other times its not - and I am not willing to deal with that mess that happens if she is having a “I’ll just take two cheerios and be on my way” type of day. Once she eats more consistently, we’ll try to work on #2s.

So what is next? Well, I think she is ready to take it up a notch. I’ve heard different approaches ranging from take them every 30 minutes to just picking more standard times to go. I’ve tried to find times to consistently take her but they don’t seem to work with her body’s timing and she nurses little but often so I can’t really follow the “20 minutes after milk” concept. My plan is to do the every 30 minutes for a day or two to get an idea of her routine then cut back to the times I think she needs to go or that she seems to be indicating a need.

BUT – the next 3-5 weeks are going to be a bit crazy for us so even though I think she would do fine with that plan if we were going to be doing our normal thing, I’ll be holding off. If we can keep what we’ve got going until June, I’ll be extremely happy. And by then she should be a good little walker and maybe even signing change so that might help make my decipher her signals easier. I’m keep you abreast of the situation.