Potty Power

We finally helped our 3 year old daughter through another rite of passage; the overnight pull-up diaper is now a part of her history.

Of course I hope I’m not jinxing anything by writing this blog. Wanna buy me a coke? Wait, is that right? I don’t think so, but it could be worth a shot. I really don’t want to go through night time potty training again. At least not until the next child is ready.

I never thought it would be this tough since our oldest daughter seemed to sort of do this on her own at a very early age (right after she was day-time potty trained at about two and half). She definitely set us up. Or more accurately, she set up her little sister.

Herein lies my theory about the myth of the middle child. IF the oldest child lives up to certain expectations, then there is a false sense of security with the second child. The second child then lets you know that s/he is a different person with a different mind, but it can easily be construed as difficult, not different. Thereby the middle child can be seen as a ‘problem’ child. This then sets up the third child to be able to do whatever they want whenever they want it, since the parents have now learned not to push. Hence the ‘spoiled baby’ in the family. See where this is going?

It all starts with the oldest. Just ask Marcia and Greg Brady. In our house, this is definitely the case. But understandably, I know this is not the case with everyone.

Nonetheless we made it through this inevitable juncture with our middle child. We started two months ago, so it’s been a journey. A while back someone told me that they woke up their almost 5 year old daughter every 2 hours all night long for potty breaks for an entire week and by the end of it she was dry all night. She swore by it and said they wished they’d done it sooner.

What? Doesn’t sound like fun to you? Well it didn’t to us either. I didn’t want to wake up every two hours when my alarm clock was a newborn baby screaming its head off for middle of the night nourishment in the next room. Why would I want to actually set an alarm clock and get up when the house is full of peaceful sleeping children?

So we started with the ‘my sleep is more valuable than a dry pull-up’ route. At 10 or 11pm we’d take her to the potty before we went to bed. We figured it was worth a shot.

And it worked. For the most part, that is. She was dry a lot of the time in the morning as long as she was able to empty her bladder a few hours after she went to bed.

At one point this singular potty break didn’t seem to be enough, so we started doing it later, around 2am, to see if that helped break up the night more evenly. Word to the wise; it didn’t seem to make much difference.

What did make a difference was monitoring her fluid intake from 4pm on (as much as she wants to drink before 4pm, then just a cup of milk with dinner at 6pm). It only took me a month or so of this training to remember that we did this with our oldest child as well. Sometimes I'm surprised I remember my own name, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I forgot something that was so important for a few weeks back in the Summer of 2004.

So now we are back to the 10 or 11pm break, which we are still hanging on to for the moment. Not sure when we’ll give that up; one step at a time.

But we were finally able to take a leap of faith and put her in underwear at night. It’s been 3 dry mornings in a row (cue the Hallelujah music).

Every night we sneak in there, drag her out of bed and carry her to the bathroom. This is my husband’s favorite part; an oh-so-adorable sleeping child snuggled up in his arms.

After you put her on the potty, without saying a word to her, she relieves herself right on cue. This took a little practice but her body started to get used to the routine pretty quickly.

And luckily she’s a girl, so she can pee while resting her head on your shoulder with her eyes closed. I guess this is the retribution for the pee-in-the-woods benefit that boys get.

One small pee for girl, one giant leap for family.