Baby Steps to Potty Training

For a while I've had this beautiful vision of getting Nathan potty trained before the new baby comes.  I found a post back in April where I document my wishful thinking on the subject.  Then in July, I celebrated him peeing in his potty for the first time, but I'm not sure it happened more then once or twice and then I got lazy about having him sit on the potty during the day.  July turned into August and there was always some reason that I didn't try any further steps towards potty training, besides reading a book or two.  After our week in Knoxville I knew that we would have a stretch of time at home without anything too disruptive happening.  And I also knew that if I wanted anything to happen further with potty training, I was going to have to get myself on the ball.  Plus I realized that since I'm heading to the restroom on the hour, every hour (hooray for pregnancy!), taking Nathan often actually fits in well with my current lifestyle.

We got home from Knoxville last weekend and I jumped into action on Monday.  And to my great surprise, the first time I sat him down on the potty and told him to "push his pee-pee out", he did!  I was thrilled!!  We called Nana and Gran to tell them "Hooray Pee-Pee!" and then celebrated again with Daddy once he got home.  Nathan actually went in his potty quite a few times on Monday, and I quickly realized that he actually knows the feelings/muscles needed to control his bladder and that the first time wasn't a fluke.  I'm wondering if it had anything to do with him peeing on the floor multiple times before/after bath with Nana the week before...

We continued the success on Tuesday.  And this amazed me: before getting into the bath tub Tuesday night, I had him sit on the potty and then asked him to tell me if he needed to go while he was in the bath tub and not to go pee-pee in the water... and he did!  Twice, in fact, he had me get him out of the tub and both times he made a tiny bit of pee in the potty!

By Wednesday morning, I decided to do a little experiment and took Nathan to the bathroom every 30 minutes to see if his diaper would stay dry between potty breaks.  He actually stayed dry for about 90 minutes until we had leave to run some errands, but I was pretty pumped about that as well. 

At this point I realized that it was realistic to think about putting him in "big boy underwear" when we were home, with constant bathroom breaks.  But I also realized that the whole #2 issue was going to be a whole other bridge to cross, one probably not as easily conquered (he went once in the bathroom when he had his diaper off... it was pretty traumatic for him!)

Last Friday I put Nathan in underwear for the first time.  We had just gone potty and were planning to head outside to play, but Nathan DID NOT want to have his diaper put back on.  So I offered him underwear as an alternative, not really knowing how he would react.  He was actually pretty excited and ended up wearing underwear outside for about 10 minutes, just long enough to get a few pictures and say "hi" to the mailman (of course!).  But once the newness wore off, he decided that he didn't like the different feeling of underwear and REALLY wanted his diaper back on.  And that's the point we were at for most of the weekend.  When Nathan would actually agree to put the underwear on, he would immediately (I'm talking 2 seconds later) start pulling on it and wanting it OFF.  I thought we may have hit a major roadblock.

Monday afternoon came and for the first time Nathan put his underwear when Brian was at home (I wasn't pushing him at all to wear it over the weekend, I figured he would come around sooner or later).  So as soon at I put it on, I said excitedly "Go show Daddy your big boy underwear!"  So he raced out of the bathroom and Brian reacted with appropriate excitement as well... then he asked "are you going to let him wear those in the house?"  Since Nathan had been tolerating underwear so poorly over the past few days, I said yes thinking it would last 5 minutes max.  But I set my timer to remind us to take Nathan to the bathroom after 20 minutes, just in case.

The timer went off and Nathan was still happily living in his underwear... but he was not interested in going to the bathroom again.  And in the few minutes that it took to convince him to go sit on the potty, he wet his underwear.  I think this was due to him thinking about going to the potty and just going too soon rather then actually waiting too long to take him.  But he sat down on the potty, made a little pee-pee and put a new pair of big boy underwear back on.  20-30 minutes later, the whole process repeated itself, even though I reminded him not to push his pee-pee out before he sat down on the potty.  This time time his bladder was a little more full and he ended up with some drips down his leg, which I think got his attention a little more then just some wet underwear.  After another 30 minutes, we were able to successfully make it to the potty with dry underwear!

Since then, we've been on and off about wearing underwear at home.  Brian keeps reminding me that Nathan is REALLY young to be potty trained especially as a boy, and I know that we have made some HUGE progress in the past 10 days whether he actually gets fully potty trained soon or not.  So if we're at home, I'll take him to the potty with me and then give him the option of putting on a diaper or big boy underwear.  I try to encourage him to wear the big boy underwear, but whatever he chooses is actually fine with me.  He has decided this week that if the diaper he took off was even a little wet, he would want a new, dry diaper put back on (but a soaking wet diaper first thing in the morning or after nap doesn't seem to faze him yet).  Anyway, I've decided to try to keep potty training low stress and just make baby steps whenever we can, but there's no reason to turn this training into a huge battle of wills between me and Nathan.

Some updates from today as I'm finishing up this post started a few nights ago... tonight Nathan stayed dry in underwear for almost an hour!  Neither Brian nor I heard the bathroom reminder timer go off and it read 26 minutes (counting upward) after Brian took Nathan to the bathroom.  But then on the flip side, I took him to the bathroom later in the evening and he only peed a very small amount and then about 5 minutes later said "oops" and he was wet.  I've been having this feeling lately that he gets so excited when he starts to pee and jumps up so quickly to check the contents of the potty that he's not actually emptying his bladder in the process... and that feeling was justified with those wet underwear this evening.

So that's the progress we've made to date.  Who knows how fast or slow it may go from here??