Potty Training

We've always known that we wanted only one child in a crib and diapers at a time. Transitioning the crib to a toddler bed was an easy adjustment for Adeline made several months ago. Her new bed has been purchased and will be put to use as soon as we're able to move the crib to the new nursery. The only thing left was potty training! We bought and read the book "Toilet Training in Less Than a Day" by Nathan Azrin. Back in February, we got our game plan ready based on the book and set out to attempt potty training on a Saturday morning so both Jared and I would be there. There were certain ideas and concepts in the book that we felt were not adequately explained so we made our minds up ahead of time that if it seemed to be going poorly we would stop and reevaluate since we still had time before the baby came. Well, needless to say, it did not take us long to realize that the program called for in that book was not exactly what was going to work best for Adeline. One thing we realized was that it needed to be done on a day when Jared was at work because she's so excited on the weekends since he's home that the mood around the house is quite different than when it's just me and her. The program also seemed extremely strict not allowing for the child to leave the room at all nor have any toys, books, etc. around. We decided that this was not the best method for us to train Adeline.

We decided I should read some other books and come up with a plan catered towards Adeline's personality. I bought the book "Potty Wise" since we absolutely loved "Baby Wise" (which we completely recommend). "Potty Wise" uses the same concept as "Toilet Training in Less Than a Day," but alters it a bit to make it less strict, in my opinion. I was totally sold on trying their method! I didn't have to keep her trapped in one room and she could read books while on the potty and play with toys in between. The method, in a nutshell, was to put Adeline in cotton underwear in the morning, have her check herself for dryness every five minutes and reward her for staying dry, then have her sit on the potty every 15 to 30 minutes and reward her pee-peeing on the potty and keeping her pants dry. The main point they hit on over and over in the book is that you want to be sure to express that you are not rewarding for actually using the potty but rather staying dry.

This was at the start of the first day. She was very excited!

Day One (Wednesday, March 31st): 7 to 8 accidents and sitting on the potty approximately 10 minutes before pee-peeing
Day Two: 2 accidents and sitting on the potty approximately 5 to 10 minutes
Day Three: 3 accidents all before 9:30am (I was in tears because I thought she regressing after how well she did the second day. Jared reassured me that it was still new and she was certainly going to get the hang of it.) Began pee-peeing as soon as she sat on the potty which is a great indicator of bladder control
Day Four: 1 accident around 7:00pm (She stayed accident free from 9:30am on the 3rd day to 7:00pm on the 4th day!)
Day Five: 3 accidents but had a very busy, active day (We put her in a pull-up so the nursery workers at church would not have to clean up any accidents as I felt certain she would not let them know when she needed to go, but to our surprise we were told that she let them know she needed to go potty and held it until she got to the potty...yay!)
Day Six (Today): ACCIDENT FREE!!!!

One of the times that she was sitting on the potty for awhile, I reminded her that she needed to "try" to pee pee. She responded by saying in a strained voice, "Twwwyying! Awmost!"

It will probably be a few more weeks before we are all confident that the training has taken hold, but we feel that she is most of the way there and all that is really left is for this to become a part of the daily routine instead of a special occasion every time she goes, which is still very much the case right now. Though it didn't happen in less than a day, it has taken much less time than we feared to get to this point, and overall it has been a very positive experience for everyone!