Potty Training Woes

Well, it's been a stressful couple of days to say the least. We had decided awhile back that over the holidays while Matt had some extra days off of work we would try to potty train Olivia. This was not something either of us were looking forward to, nor did we have any false ideas of how difficult and stressful it was going to be, but nothing could have prepared us for the tumultuous 36 hours we experienced.

Olivia has always been fairly interested in the potty. We've had potty seats for our toilets since she was 14 months and have placed her up there on occasion when she's shown an interest just to get her comfortable with it. Never once has it been forced or even encouraged, we've simply let her curiosity lead the way up until now. So we found a 3-day Potty Training plan that some friends had told us about and I had heard through various mom message boards as being the "best" method to use. The method is outlined in an e-book which we spent time reading together and taking notes to make sure we were going to follow it correctly. To make a loooong story short, this method of potty training is sort of an intense boot-camp training that is supposed to start off with your child having accidents and moving from that into a recognizable feeling of having go "go" within 3 days. Sounds a bit sketchy as I'm typing it out, but if you read the book and talk to a zillion moms who it's worked for, you start to buy in. This method emphasizes the importance of NOT using diapers/pull-ups/trainers whatsoever once you begin. The child is to be in underwear day and night during the 3 days and from there on out. This made us both a little nervous, especially thinking about naps and overnight, but if we were going to do it we were going to give it 100% otherwise, why bother. So Friday morning we got Olivia out of bed, had a ceremonial "throwing away the diapers" party (although since we use cloth diapers, we put them all in a trash bag that we snuck off to the guest room since we weren't ACTUALLY going to throw them out). She was more than excited to put on her big-girl undies and prance around pant-less in our living room. This was pretty much where the excitement ended. One of the key steps in the method is telling the child "Tell Mommy or Daddy if you have to use the potty" which she nailed immediately. Every time she had to go she told us - and in the beginning, this was of course AS she was already going. This is all part of the process and you're supposed to scoop them up and take them to the potty and see if they can finish going on the potty. Well, somewhere between accident #1 an accident #34, Olivia began to get very emotional and downright hysterical whenever we would try to place her on the potty. We never forced it, the book said if they didn't want to sit on the potty then to just let them go in their undies. So we did. Over and over and over. The problem then became that the urine began to chafe her already super sensitive, eczema covered legs and she began to cry from the pain. It was at this point that we began to think we were pushing something that just wasn't meant to be right now.

As hard as it was for both of us to throw in the towel after only working through a day and a half of the program, this was for the best. For whatever reason, she is scared of the potty right now and we need to get her through that before this can be attempted again. It was an emotionally draining couple of days but we felt so relieved not having to ring in the new year with such stressful energy around us. Hopefully she'll show signs of readiness in a couple more months so we can get her trained before new baby. Until then, it's back to the cloth diaps. P.S. this pic has nothing to do with potty training but I couldn't end such a downer of a post without a cute photo of some sort :)