Diapers don’t flatter my style.
I post so much less frequently these days than I used to. I wish that weren’t the case — I wish I posted more regularly — but the truth is that I’ve grown a little tired of the concept that originally defined this site. Analyzing parenting-related science is so much dang WORK, and frankly, I feel like I’m either preaching to the choir or pointlessly arguing with folks who don’t want to be convinced, depending upon the audience a particular article attracts. I enjoy the “blog” side of this site much more, but I feel guilty if the blog-to-science ratio gets too high, as though I’m eating dessert without finishing my dinner. Lately, everything I’ve felt like saying has been “bloggy” instead of “sciency,” and I haven’t been sharing it as a result. Screw it. It’s my site, right? I’ll leave all the old science posts up for reference, but those of you who have followed this blog from the start will probably notice a change: I expect that the pure science posts will be much fewer and farther-between (if they continue to show up at all). As a caveat, of course, I am me — a “squint” to the core — and I suspect science oozes out of my pores even when I don’t mean it to. Still, if I don’t feel obligated to analyze articles, I’ll probably write more, which is a good thing all around.
So, having said that, I wrote here — and, more recently, here — about starting to potty train W, but I got lazy and never actually wrote about the process. It’s definitely a story I should share, because while it had its frustrations, it went surprisingly smoothly. I will tell that story soon, I promise. Not today, though. Instead, I want to share something that happened last night. W is completely diaper-free during the day and for nap, but still wore a diaper at night, up until yesterday. She has occasional accidents during the day, of course (too dang busy to use the potty sometimes), but they’re few and far between, so I feel pretty good about things. We potty trained using Jamie Glowacki’s awesome ebook, “Oh Crap. Potty Training” as a general guide. When I say “general guide,” I mean that I have finally — FINALLY — learned not to try to follow any parenting book word for word (for instance, my attachment parenting disaster was precipitated by trying to go “by the book”). Anyway, I read what Jamie had to say and followed it for the most part, adapting where I needed to. She suggests night training within about 3 months of finishing day training, which I took under advisement.
Different books and philosophies say vastly different things about night potty training. Some suggest that you can do it very early (like Jamie), and others (like Elizabeth Pantley of “The No-Cry Potty Training Solution”) recommend waiting, stating that children aren’t physiologically prepared for night training until they’re much older. I figured I’d see how things went before committing. Turns out that once I got W day-trained, night dryness kind of fell into place. We put on the night diaper after bath, but unless I put it on really early or don’t make sure she uses the potty as soon as she wakes up, it’s always dry in the morning. 9 times out of 10, she’ll tell me she needs to go potty when she wakes up in the morning, so she’s definitely with the program and doesn’t like going in her diaper anymore. A few times in the last week or two, she’s awakened around 10 pm and asked to use the potty, so I’ve taken her diaper off and then put it back on again afterward. We’ve been talking about night dryness, and she has agreed with me that it’s “almost” time to take of the diaper at night, but she hasn’t really committed to it yet, and since we’re still well within the suggested three month window, I haven’t pushed.
Last night, as I was getting W ready for bed, she asked me, “Where’s the baby?” I had no idea what she meant. She said, “Babies wear diapers. I’m a big girl. I wear underwear-pants.” I was putting her night diaper on at the time, so I suppose that’s what prompted her comment. She went on to say, “No baby in this house, right?” I agreed with her, wondering if she was suggesting that she shouldn’t be wearing a night diaper anymore, but we didn’t discuss it further. She went to sleep, and about two hours later, she woke up and said she needed to pee. As she was sitting on the potty, I asked her if she felt like she was ready to be a big girl — no diaper — at nighttime. She said she was, so while she finished on the potty, I double-bagged the mattress.* She threw away her LAST DIAPER EVER in triumphant fashion and returned to bed, where she fell asleep and stayed dry all night.
*Greatest tip ever, and I have no idea where I heard it, but I wanted to share. From the bottom up, our mattress has a waterproof mattress pad, fitted sheet, another waterproof pad, and another fitted sheet on it. If/when she has an accident at night, I won’t have to change the sheets entirely; I’ll be able to take off the wet sheet and pad, and there will be another set underneath all ready to go.
Once W was sleeping peacefully, I started to think about how the last vestiges of her babyhood are slipping away. Sigh. I guess it was prophetic, our conversation from earlier in the evening: there is no baby in this house anymore.
