Potty Training Has Begun

A short while back I found this great article on Pinterest about 5 Things You Can Do with Your Baby To Make Potty Training Later On Easier.

I have a friend who has a little one about a month younger than Brielle and has poop-trained her baby from a week old. Therefore, she has only changed a small handful of poopy diapers in her babies 8 months of life; most due to being on road-trips and in the vehicle. Anyway, I read the article and was curious about the whole thought process. In short, here are some of the steps they say to try before your baby is ready to potty train, which should help the whole process later on.

1. Acknowledge when baby is having a bowel movement and associate a word or phrase with it
We do this with Brielle to some degree. When we change her diaper, or she's pooping or tooting where we see and hear her, we always say "stinky stinky bum bum." We've made a song of it and a game out of it. She thinks it's funny and says "bum bum." I know for a fact that she relates the words to the actions that go on in the diaper because when she's tooting, she's said "bum bum" and smiled.

2. Let your mobile baby watch you go to the bathroom
Done! Since she can crawl to wherever she wants now, she's in the bathroom almost always with me. And if I need to know where she is, I bring her to the bathroom with me. Plus, living in a house with dogs and babies...you never get privacy.

3. Buy a small potty and keep it around, long before you plan to use it
I've had a potty in the house since I had the daycare kids here. It sits under the sink in the main floor bathroom and is the style that fits on the toilet seat. Not an on-the-floor style of potty but I personally think this will work.

4.  Have your baby sit on a potty sometimes while he goes – even with his diaper still on
Yanked the diaper down today and the results were awesome!!! First time ever sitting her on the potty.

5. Let your baby go diaper free every now and then
She has had some diaper freedom, usually before bathtime....and she loves it. Only once did we have a pee-on-the-floor episode but can you blame the girl since water was running and she was bare butt on the cold floor!!

The full article goes into greater detail with all 5 points I just listed. I suggest reading it if you have a baby/infant/toddler that's not yet potty trained.

Yes, I blurped out the evidence with a cute little ladybug. You're welcome!!

So today I was in the kitchen and Brielle was playing on the floor. I heard the grunting sound that comes before the big diaper change, looked over and she stopped. When she did it a second time I scooped her up as quick as I could, ran to the bathroom, threw the potty onto the toilet, yanked down her pants & diaper and sat her on the potty. I then said "stinky stinky bum bum," she smiled at me, waited a few seconds and then the magic happened. No issues for her on her part, what-so-ever. We cheered and clapped and she looked very excited about whatever the heck mommy was so happy about. And that's it. That's all it took. The whole event was only a couple of minutes, from whisking her away to the potty, to putting her diaper back on.

If I can catch her before she poops in her diaper, as often as possible, I think it'll make it even easier to potty train her than I thought. Honestly, I was never worried about this whole process. I'm very confident that with some consistency and a little hard work, we could potty train her quite easily when the time comes. But with this little step in the right direction, I think it will be even easier than I had hoped.

I do realize that going once does not mean she's going to be potty trained soon. But starting at this early age (9 1/2 months old) may really help with the whole process later. I hope we can make it past the "hiding to poop in her diaper" phase or the "fear of sitting on the toilet" phase. It's a good start anyway and I'm very excited about it.

Yay Brielle!!