Potty Training the Working Mom Way

The title of this blog has been something of a misnomer for about two months now because, while the doctoral studies continue, we haven't been doing many diaper changes lately.  In late September, we set aside a weekend for the three day potty training "boot camp" you can read about in various places online or in books.  Their stories all go like this: you set aside three days for the task.  You don't leave the house, and you don't let your kid wear a diaper or any clothes.  You offer no negative reinforcement at all, but usher the toddler over to the potty as soon as they start to go.  You offer a lot of praise and a treat any time they get something in the potty.  All the stories seem the same: on day one, the child has accidents everywhere.  On day two, the child begins moving toward the potty to go, even if it means they have accidents on the way. And on day three, the child is miraculously trained and has no accidents!  You just let the kid run around naked for another week or two and she never pees on any of her clothing.

These people are full of it.  Just like those women who say that co-sleeping is 100% relaxing and allows them to feel fully rested from the time their child leaves the womb.  Just like those women who claim that after one night of allowing their baby to cry it out, their child slept perfectly for twelve straight hours every night until they went off to college.  If these people are not liars, they must have those ever elusive "easy children" that I've never actually seen in real life.  Thankfully, I have honest friends who've successfully potty trained their kids already, and they encouraged me and laughed with me when I got very frustrated.  Since they're all stay at home moms, though, figuring out how to manage this milestone across the home and day care environments took some extra creativity and flexibility.  In case anyone is interested in our potty training trials, I thought I'd pass along some of the most useful things I figured out over the course of the process in case they help others down the line.

• You'll know when you and your child are ready to attempt this task.  Thankfully, you've already become an expert at politely dismissing unsolicited advice by this point in your child's life. Because if you think your child's ready at 23 months a lot of people will tell you it's "too soon."
• Talk to your day care providers in advance to get a sense of how much they'll be willing to cooperate and support the process.  I was lucky in this regard because Nora's teachers are fantastic.  Her main teacher was super excited for her, proud of her when she showed up in undies after the three days of training at home, has never complained once about having to clean up after an accident, and has even encouraged me about what a great job I'm doing.
• The three day naked boot camp method IS a great way to start.  Here are my additions to the tips you can find elsewhere for how to prepare for these three days:  
• Ask yourself: what clothes will I want to be wearing when I'm getting peed on repeatedly? And then make sure you have a whole stack of those clothes clean.  (For me, this was yoga pants and t-shirts.) 
• Make sure you have plenty of alcohol in the house.  That way, when you survive each day (especially that first one) of being cooped up inside with a peeing machine, you can reward yourself with a little big of liquid relaxation.  And if you need a drink even  before bedtime, I won't judge you.
• Look for little signs of improvement from each day to the next rather than comparing your child's progress to anything you read online.  My friends told me to stick with it as long as I felt like Nora was moving forward instead of rejecting the process.  I'm so glad they did.  They told me that after about a week, I'd be surprised at how far she'd come.  They were right.
• Think about what "treat" will incentivize your child without sabotaging your attempts to feed her a healthy diet.  We settled on fruit snacks because Nora is manipulative.  Once she figured out that she was going to get a treat for going on the potty, she started squirting out one drop at a time and demanding a treat.  
• If you're like me, you might think the way to avoid accidents is to ask your child to pee on the potty really frequently.  This might work for some kids, but I realized on day three that I was asking Nora to do it so much that she was a) getting annoyed with me and b) not really able to feel when she had to go without being told.  I decided she would ultimately learn faster if I wasn't so committed to preventing accidents, and I think that worked out according to my plan.
• When your child goes back to day care, consider using thin underwear under pull-ups.  The people who use the three day method sometimes act like you will fully sabotage your training if your child ever sees a diaper again, and they swear pull ups are evil.  But on the other hand, no matter how supportive your child's teachers are, sanitation concerns prevent them from allowing your kid to pee in puddles all over the classroom.  Our teachers were immediately on board with putting Nora's undies under her pull up, which I figured would keep things sanitary while also making sure Nora could feel the wetness when she had an accident.  Once she stopped having large accidents, they just stopped using the pull ups and switched to the thick undies.
• We like the thick training undies since we never knew when Nora might tinkle a little bit before she realized she was going.  The ones Gerber makes are better than the store brand from Babies-r-Us, which have stretched out an unfortunate amount.  We didn't use the plastic pants that go over these because even with Nora's nice thick thighs, they seemed really gappy.  I figured the pee would just run right down her leg.
• Expect your child's progress at day care to lag behind her progress at home.  Nora stopped having pee accidents in the house after about a week, aside from the occasional rare one.  It took several more weeks before she stopped having regular pee accidents at school.  It took her longer to stop having poop accidents at home, and that improvement has taken longer to take hold at school, too.  
• Think about getting a travel potty.  This is something I would have thought was unnecessary, but Billy's cousin Jacelyn gave us this one for Nora's birthday and it has been really nice to have in the car.  The bags are kind of expensive, but we use them so rarely that the 30 pack I bought will probably last as long as we need them.  The travel potty's real function is to eliminate that underlying anxiety you'll have about traveling in the car with a potty training child-- and since I drive Nora to and from day care every day, this has taken a big weight off my mind.
• While I'm recommending potties, you don't need an expensive or fancy one.  We bought this froggy potty, and then I promptly bought another so we can have one in the living room on the main leve and one in the upstairs bathroom.  (Again: is two necessary? No.  Is it worth the extra $10? For me, definitely-- especially since we saved a lot of money on diapers by potty training early.)

I think that's about it.  We're still using diapers at naptime and overnight, though I think Nora will be ready to do away with those fairly soon.  Like everything else, we figured it would be better to do this one step at a time rather than trying to force it on her all at once.  And aside from those first three days, which nearly drove me crazy because I had unreasonable expectations and because I hate being cooped up in the house, the whole process has been relatively painless.  And like everything else about parenting since Nora was about five months old, the joys of the process have far outweighed the frustrations.  It is so delightful to see how excited she gets about peeing and pooping in the potty.  She likes to please, but really, I think the real effect of the praise is that it makes her feel like going in the potty is something she deserves to take pride in.  I'll wrap this up with a few pictures that prove this point.

This is us posing for a picture to send Dad on the third day of bottomless boot camp.  She wanted to show him the treat she had earned for going in the potty.

And this is her on her birthday, immediately after telling our photographer, Ena, that she had just gone peepee on the potty.

I never get tired of seeing that proud look on her face.  And I never think "You know, I wish I'd changed more diapers today."  So if I can offer one last piece of advice, it's to start the potty training process when you think you're both ready rather than putting it off out of fear about how it will go.  If we hadn't done it fairly early, we'd not only still be changing diapers-- we'd be missing out on all the great comments she makes about it, too.  Like last week, when she shouted from the bathroom, "MOMMY!  Poopies look like broccolis!  But I can't eat em!" or like each morning, when she tells me excitedly "I need undies LIKE YOU!"

Nora's Second Birthday!

Nora turned TWO on October 14!  In celebration of her birthday, my mom, brother Nate, sister-out-law Ashley, and nephew Everett came to town for a visit.  I'll write more on that later, but since they were here, they got to participate in Nora's birthday parties!  We hosted a family party at our house on Saturday and a friends party on Sunday.  We split them up because our house is not big enough to accommodate all these guests at once, but as it turns out, both parties were pretty packed all on their own.  We are feel very fortunate to have so many friends and family actively involved in Nora's life, and we hope they didn't mind that it got a little crowded at her parties.  As far as I could tell, Nora loved every minute of her parties, and we liked getting a chance to show everyone what she is like in her own element.

I used a Go, Dog! Go! theme this year.  It is Nora's favorite book, and she is getting good at "reading" along with it.  It's also a tradition in my family and a favorite of Nora's second cousins, Lily and Cash. Growing up in my family, my dad frequently asked us "Do you like my hat?" and we were always made to wear crowns on our birthday, so making party hat crowns as our "craft" for the little ones seemed like the natural choice.  In addition to the decorations from the book I put up around the house, I used dachshund fabrics I found online to make Nora two skirts and coordinating 2 year old shirts.  These were fun projects for me, and she liked wearing her "doggies."

Here are my favorites among the pictures that family members shared from the family party!

And here are the highlights of the many pictures Tres took from the friend party!

Thank you to everyone who helps make our two year old's life so sweet!

Toddler Firsts

Nora may be rapidly approaching two, but she still has so many new things to experience!  This month has brought several firsts for Nora that we wanted to share with the family.

First Orioles game!
Since "sitting still" is not a skill Nora has shown any interest in mastering, we didn't think she'd be attending any games until next season.  However, Billy's aunt and uncle were recently unable to use their tickets to sit at the bistro tables in the all-you-can-eat section.  Since this would make it easy for us to be up and down with Nora, we appreciated the chance to take her to the ballpark!  As a bonus, Nora got to share the experience with her grandparents, great grand parents, and great aunt and uncle!  She and I also did one lap around the concourse, and she was quite a hit in her little Orioles dress.  She even knows how to cheer "Go Orioles!" and learned to shout "charge!" at the right moment while at the game. But I think eating chocolate ice cream with her dad seemed to be her favorite part, which is my own most distinct memory of attending A's games with my dad when I was a kid.

First Navy Football Game!
Although I took Nora to join the family at the Navy tailgate for one of the games last year, she was only there for an hour or two.  This time, we drove down to the stadium after she woke up from her nap to spend the whole afternoon there, and she loved the whole experience!  Although she didn't last long in the season ticket seats, she loved dancing around on the lawn in the general admission area.  Once again, she got to share this milestone with plenty of family members-- Gram, Pop, Uncle Brian, Aunt Vickie, and Tres all joined us for a great day!

First Haircut!
I trimmed Nora's bangs when she was a few months old, but it has been growing out so nicely since then that we've just let it grow.  And it sure has grown!  Lately, though it has been getting tangly after the bath and her curls have lost a lot of their spring.  We took her to a local kids haircut salon, but even they weren't quite prepared for her unique features.  She was so short and her hair was so long that the stylist couldn't really cut it well until she had Nora stand on the floor.  It wasn't easy to get her to look in the right direction, but she was calm and cooperative otherwise.  We were a little sad to say goodbye to her impressively long locks, but her layered clavicut is right on trend and her curls are full of bounce again!

Body Parts

I was doing really well with documenting Nora's development on video until a little after one year.  Then it became difficult, both because she had so many new skills each month and because she was much more aware of being recorded.  Now she is so used to talking to her West Coast family on video chat that she gets angry when I try to record and there is no one on the screen to talk to her.  But this morning she finally let me get a video of her pointing to all the body parts on her baby.  This was definitely one of her earliest skills, and at this point, her most reliable.  She can also say the correct names of all the body parts if you point them out to her.



The other identification skill she does well with at this point is naming animals and making their noises. She can count to ten on her own, though she usually stops at three or six.  She also sang through all the ABCs in order once recently, but she usually just sings them in random chunks.  Her colors are coming along more slowly.  Right now, the answer to "What color is this?" is always the same: "Red."  I guess that makes it her favorite color?

Thoughts on Weaning

If you continue breastfeeding after your child begins eating food, a common question you can expect to be asked is "How long are you planning to keep doing that?"  My usual answer was, "Until one of us is ready to stop."  While many lactation advocates indicate that you should keep nursing until your baby self-weans, I feel like the lactating mother's feelings matter, too.  If I could have seen the future, the concrete answer to that question would have been "Until she is 19 months old."  That's right-- Nora is no longer a breastfeeding toddler, and while I am very happy and proud to have provided her with all the advantages of breastmilk, I am also glad to be done nursing her.

In case anyone is curious, I thought I'd explain what the process of weaning was like for us.  I was determined to get to one year of exclusive breastfeeding so we could bypass formula entirely.  As I've mentioned before, this required a LOT of effort on my part once she began full time day care.  I spent the month before building up a freezer stash by pumping every night before bed.  Once she began day care, I was pumping twice during the day for about 15-20 minutes, and then I would pump again for about the same amount of time before I went to bed.  She still nursed like normal on the weekends.

This kept us going until her first birthday, at which point we decided to start mixing in alternate milk.  Since Nora has the dreaded dairy allergy, we first started with almond milk, which is more easily available.  After a few weeks of what seemed like continuous cold symptoms, we switched to coconut milk, and have stuck with that ever since.  Since these milks don't have as much fat as whole milk, we have made sure to supplement those fats in her diet with things like avocado, Earth Balance spread, coconut oil, etc.

We wanted to introduce non-human milk gradually, and I wanted to reduce my supply slowly because I have always had difficulty with hormonal changes.  So I first dropped the nighttime pumping session, and this resulted in mixing about 3oz of breastmilk with 1oz of almond/coconut milk for each bottle.  If Nora noticed any difference, it didn't bother her.  A few weeks later, and a few weeks before my comprehensive exam, I cut back to pumping once mid-day.  At that point the bottles were more like 50/50.  By the time I passed my exam, I was so tired of pumping that one of the ways I celebrated was by giving up pumping entirely.  I did suffer some headaches with each dropped pumping session, and when I stopped pumping altogether, they were noticeably worse, but that only lasted about a week.

From late November through early February, Nora was nursing when she woke up and when she went to bed, and she was drinking coconut milk during the day.  While I was home with her in December and January, we worked on switching her from bottles to sippy cups in preparation for the toddler room at her new day care.  There were only a few times during this period that she asked to breastfeed during the day, but she was usually satisfied by an offer of coconut milk, and if not, we could distract her with something else.  We did suffer a bit of a setback when she was sick in Oregon-- since she was dehydrated, and didn't want to do anything but nurse, I let her nurse whenever she wanted for those few days.  Then she returned to day care and wanted to be nursing literally from the minute I picked her up until the minute I put her down to bed.  That transition was hard on all of us, but thankfully it only lasted a few days.  Once she felt comfortable at school, she no longer needed to nurse during the day, so we were back to nursing at wake-up and bedtime.

In early February I was getting tired of nursing, so I started offering Nora coconut milk in the morning. If she wanted to nurse after she finished the coconut milk I would let her, but that only lasted about a week.  I thought my supply would dry up fairly quickly at that point, but we continued nursing for 10-15 minutes before bed until about two weeks ago.  At that point, we had put her down to bed without nursing a few times here and there, and she didn't have any trouble getting to sleep.  Nursing before bed still seemed to be comforting to her, but I didn't think she needed to do it, and I was ready to be done.  So I just decided which night would be our last, spent that nursing session reflecting on how fortunate we are that weaning happened fairly naturally, and then the next night I just rocked her and put her right to bed.  She hasn't shown any indication that she misses it, and although I do feel a little nostalgic for when she was a baby, and nursing is tied up in those emotions, I am glad to be done.  She has been gleaning nutrients from my body, at varying levels, for over two years.  Although I couldn't be happier about being able to provide those nutrients and their benefits to her, I am proud that we are continuing to foster her developing independence and happy to have my body back to myself.

Since we were changing her bedtime routine slightly, we also ditched the sleep sacks she has been using since she was four months old.  Now she gets tucked in under her very own crib quilt, which I made her.  This was a fun little project for me, and since she's no longer making use of my breastmilk, I like thinking that she's tucked under something else I made with love just for her.  : )