Help! Completely PT'd preschooler completely regressing!

[sarahsthreads]

So I can count on two fingers the number of accident-free days in the past two weeks, and I'm getting sick of it. DD has been completely, independently potty-trained for 8 months now, and all of a sudden has been peeing AND pooping her pants multiple times a day. Nothing has changed in her life recently, she's known about the baby on the way for more than two months, and while I totally expect her to regress a bit when the baby comes, I can't think of a reason for her to halfway through my pregnancy...

I'm at my wits end. All last week I treated each accident very calmly and just cleaned her up and reminded her to listen to her body better next time. Now I'm starting to get angry, which I know won't help. I made her change her own clothes and clean herself up today while I took care of her car seat cover. (Please keep your fingers crossed that it will be dry by the time I have to drive with her to a rehearsal at 3:00 today.) I picked her up from school, where she made no mention of needing to go to the bathroom. Less than a minute later (and less than five minutes from home) she told me she needed to go potty. After I told her she absolutely could not have an accident in her car seat, she told me it was OK, she had only put pee-pee in her panties. Aaaaaaargh!

Any suggestions? I've considered taking away something (like TV time or a favorite activity) when she has an accident, but they're not related and that doesn't make sense to me. We don't do time-outs, but again that doesn't make sense to me as a consequence. DH thinks we should consider putting her in a diaper after an accident, but I'm afraid that's going to backfire on us. I even resorted to bribery (if you stay accident-free this week we'll get that Belle dress-up costume you want) but she's already lost that opportunity on day 2.

Please help. I'm just so wiped out all the time, and trying to keep in a reasonably good, playful mommy mood as much as I can, and this is really starting to wear on me.

Thanks,
Sarah

[Momof3Labs]

I'd take her to the ped and rule out a UTI (or anything else that could be causing this).

[sarahsthreads]

I guess I'll give her ped a call and ask what they recommend. She's not showing any symptoms of a UTI at all, though, so I'm really starting to believe it's behavioral. She does not have any accidents EVER at preschool, or at the friend's house where she spends the entire day every Wednesday.

But I will put in a call to the ped tomorrow, just to be sure.

Sarah

[Wife_and_mommy]

Another thought I had was that it's a regression due to your pg. If there's buzz/activity going on at home related, it could cause the accidents. As irritating as it is, I'd try to keep my cool.

FYI, when we were arranging ds's room and doing some other rearranging during my pg, dd was *very* clingy etc. Granted, she was younger than your dd but I still think it's the same phenomenon. Thank goodness we weren't pt'ing back then. She actually had accidents at ps two weeks in a row when she returned after xmas break last month.

[sarahsthreads]

OK, not to jinx myself here, but ever since I blew up at her on Tuesday about the car seat accident, DD has been perfect on the potty. She was very sad on Tuesday that I said I was so "'appointed" (disappointed) in her, so I've made sure to tell her how proud I am that she's stayed dry all day for the past two days.

We haven't done anything at all to prepare for DC #2 yet (my u/s is next week and I'm hoping to find out gender then) so really, nothing has changed in her life yet. Maybe just the fact that school was off last week was too much change in her routine?

Ah, well. Thanks for all the advice - btw, the nurse didn't think she needed to come in based on her complete lack of any UTI symptoms, and I'm more than happy to keep her out of the germy office if I can help it. Everyone around here seems to have come down with a horrible, awful flu and I'm considering bathing in Lysol...

Sarah