Update and Nightime Readiness?

Well, we are starting our seventh day after going cold turkey with diapers and daytime is going well - the last three days we've only had one accident a day.

These accidents occur after DH gets home, I haven't figured out if she is so excited to be playing with him that she doesn't want to stop OR if he annoys her so much with his constant questioning, "do you need to potty?" that she does it just out of spite :). She has also been dry during nap time.

So my two new questions are 1) is there any way to prevent her 'spraying' her pee (she tries to watch herself pee and ends up directing the stream out of the toilet); and 2) what do you guys do at nightime? Before you think that I am trying to overachieve let me tell you that I had no plans to try for nightime potty training just yet, but...last night DD got me up twice crying that she needed to go potty. I was using up the last of her Pampers at night, but after the second episode I broke out a bag of Pull-ups that someone gave us and put her in that instead.

Do you think that this is an indication that she is ready to go in panties at night? Should I skip the Pull-ups? Here I thought I was doing the right thing by waiting, but maybe she is cuing me that we need to forge ahead.

Your opinions, thoughts, and warnings are appreciated. TIA!

Jen in Okinawa
Mom to Noelle (2 1/2)

Wow if Jen is doing nighttime that's awesome! Amy will get up and go pee first thing in the morning but she does still pee at night in her sleep. I know because when she takes the occasional nap she sometimes pees and I KNOW she has not woken up. So we do use Easy Ups at night. They are not as easy to pull up as underwear but they do have the underwear 'shape'.

However every so often she will ask to wear her real underwear to bed and then I give it a try. One of these days when she requests it there will be success and we will be nighttime dry. But I think right now she's just not physically capable of it. Certainly if Jen seems to be asking to wear underwear/use the potty at night she should at least try! Is she in a crib or a big girl bed? If you want her to potty in the night she would need a way to get out of bed, walk to the bathroom and pee, and come back. We leave the door to the bathroom open for Amy and have a small nightlight in there. She does use it occasionally, but only if she has woken up. Another trick you could try is to leave a portable potty right next to her bed so that if she wakes up at night she doesn't have far to go.

As for the spray, it's something you have to deal with for a little while. You can't stop her from looking if she's interested. But you can try to get her to sit further back on the potty or lean more forward.

Good luck!

Thanks for the advice.

Noelle is in a (converted) crib so she can get in and out on her own. We have a special potty seat that sits on the regular toilet - it has a ladder/footrest with handles so that she can climb up and turn around to sit by herself. She is pretty self-sufficient in that she can remove her underwear/pj bottoms, climb up and sit down, but she hasn't wiped yet (i've been doing this) and she has problems getting her clothes back up. ***huge irony-as I am typing this I hear a cry of "mommy I go potty" I rush out to find her with her jeans (poor thing, these are tough compared to her knit pants) halfway down and pee going everywhere! I feel so sorry for her when this happens*** So I guess she isn't ready to go by herself. Even with her stepstool she can't reach the sink handles so she can't wash by herself (she's a bitty little thing).

I don't mind getting up and helping her go, I was mainly suprised and a little annoyed with myself for not thinking of pull-ups right away. I wish we could get easy-ups here, they seem so much more comfy (saw some in the store when we were in the states) than the pull-ups (which I have to knead to get the stiffness out). One of the reasons I was glad to have her moving out of diapers is that the bases have trouble keeping her size in stock - I often search up and down the island (we have about 12 bases on Okinawa) looking for size 4s for weeks before they'll get another shipment in.

I guess we'll try the pull-ups tonight for the whole night and see if that makes a difference in terms of me getting her on the potty in time.

Jen in Okinawa
Mom to Noelle (2 1/2)

Keep track of her wetness/dryness at night. Right after DS daytime trained (admittedly it was at about 39 mos.), he nighttime trained really quickly. I just kept track of his easy ups in the morning and marked on the calendar (the same one we used to keep track of the potty training) when he was dry and when he wasn't. I found that he was pretty much dry all the time with a very occassional wet night. So we night trained right away. He still has occassional accidents at night, but we try to help him by making him pee right before going into bed. And pretty much all his accidents are in the morning a couple hours before he would normally get up. This morning he had a "mini" accident. He apparently caught himself peeing and stopped it, he finished peeing in the toilet instead of soaking himself like he usually does. I was so proud of him! I use a crib pad (like the lap pads only bigger) or a twin size waterproof pad right under the sheet where he sleeps (full size bed) and that catches the pee so I don't have to worry about the mattress. I think you should at least try it. What do you have to lose besides a little sleep and a couple loads of laundry?