I knew the day would come when I would need some major encouragement.
It is here.
The day started off well. We peed in the toilet after waking up, tried before we went to the store, successfully went shopping for an hour, and peed when we got home.
And then it went downhill. I believe it has something to do with the fact that our kid hasn't pooped in three days.
I can tell he's running around, trying to hold it in. I don't blame him, suppose. Going from pooping in his diaper to pooping in open air would probably be scary. Holding it in is what resulted in accident, after accident, after accident. Even after we gave him juice (a big no-no in our house, but he picked it out at the store, and I knew from it's sugar content, it would probably have to make him poop). I also knew the juice was going to make him pee more, which I anticipated with asking him to sit on the toilet.
Several times, when asked to sit on the toilet, he did not want to. Most likely because he knew he had to poop.
Around lunchtime, we had our first accident, and it was a big one. Luckily, he was wearing sweatpants, so it didn't soak through, but it was a lot of pee.
After he woke up from his nap, where I was nursing Catherine in her room next door, I heard him moving around and knew I had to get there fast. But my milk hadn't let down yet and I knew it was going to be disastrous if she didn't at least get a few drops.
Yep, I was too late. I knew it was not an accident while he was sleeping, as his bed and blanket were dry. It wasn't a horrible accident, just enough to soak through his underwear and get his shorts damp. So we changed, I remained positive, and went about our day.
During his nap, Eric and I lugged our Christmas decorations up from the basement and began decorating. I could tell, as James shuttled ornaments from me in the living room, to Eric in the dining room, that he needed to pee. He would also wag his hands behind himself in a way that only someone who really needed to poop would. We tried to get him to sit on the toilet, which he did a few times, but most of the time, he would only pee a little. Then he would go about his awkward poop dance again.
After that, we had another accident because he refused to sit on the toilet. After that, I took the both of us to the hall bathroom, shut us in with the tablet, and sat on my toilet while James sat on his, playing Angry Birds. After 20 minutes, no poop. But hey, he had beaten several levels, so that's exciting.
Again, he had a sprung-a-leak accident and we didn't have to clean up a mess, only had to change his underwear. Dinner has been sparse around here since we gorge ourselves during the day, and gave James some pears and a slice of string cheese to snack on while we went downstairs to watch (you guessed it!) Frozen.
Because it was so warm here today, the basement was cold since we didn't run our fireplace. After coming back downstairs while quickly grabbing myself a sweatshirt, James was peeing. All. Over. The. Floor.
I felt horrible, but could not mask my disappointment anymore. I made him do everything this time. Mostly, I would grab some wipes, a towel, the spray to clean it up. This time I made him get it all. The towel, the spray, the new clothes, the wipes to wipe him down. Even though they were two floors up, I made him get it himself. I remained calm, but disappointed. He could tell.
The rest of the evening, he kept saying, "I pee!" and run to the toilet. He would yank his pants down and sit on the toilet, producing nothing. And then he sat there. On two separate occasions, he sat on the toilet for 15 minutes, producing nothing. I realized it was because he probably saw my disappointment and wanted to please me. Isn't that what this is all about.
In hindsight, today was a busy day. We cleaned the house from our vegetative state the past few days, did a ton of laundry, Catherine was extra fussy, and we decided to drag out all of our Christmas decorations. I ran to the store to get extra things we needed, and probably didn't pay as much attention to James as we should have. In fact, we should have definitely been more excited with his pee, but we weren't.
Part of that, I think, was our fatal mistake. We didn't celebrate like we had in the past few days, because I assumed (you know what that means...) that he got it, based off our success from yesterday. Apparently, I have to keep this charade up for awhile. Awesome...
Another part, was the fact that the kid hasn't pooped in three days. This is a kid who poops every day, sometimes twice a day. He can't possibly be feeling good. Poor thing.
If anyone out there (the whole 2 people who read this blog) have any advice on how to get this kid to poop in the toilet, please let me know. At this point, I've gone from curious to concerned in that he hasn't pooped. We gave him a bit of Miralax, which will hopefully help, but I don't want him to become constipated, and then have a horrible time on the toilet. Ugh.
So now, today, I will admit. This potty-training thing is hard.
UPDATE: I am a problem-solver by nature, and if I had to name one of my strongest characteristic traits, that would be it. I can't just sit and say, "Oh well, that didnt work out." Or "I need help." I just do. So I sat and thought about my sweet boy and his obvious fear of pooping in the toilet.
*BOOM* It hit me like a ton of bricks. He is used to going in a diaper, which is wedged up against his but all day. He is not used to it just falling away from his body.
I think the approach I am going to take is simply a diaper in the toilet. I refuse to back-pedal by putting a diaper on him except at night, but I really think that he is just used to pooping with something THERE. I plan to have Eric explain to him that the diaper will only be there when he has to poop tomorrow, and slowly, he will be able to see that the poop is still in the toilet. I just hope it doesn't backfire.
Also, as I was coming up to bed, I heard rustling in James room. Sure as shit (haha), I checked on him and he was standing in his crib, looked at me and said, "I pooped." So I took him out, took off his diaper, rolled the poop into the toilet, and he laughed. Then we took the toilet bowl to the big toilet bowl, dumped it and flushed the poop away, all while saying, "Bye-bye poop!" Just like we did the other day. Being that it was 11:00 p.m., he was not to thrilled. We put another diaper on and back to bed he went.
I am more than thrilled that he finally pooped, as I don't want him to become constipated, but less than thrilled it was in his diaper. Ugh.
It will be interesting to see how it goes tomorrow!!
No comments:
Post a Comment