Month 16: One Giant Leap for Bare Bottomed Babies

A HUGE learning leap this month.    Baby Girl  had been practicing shaking her head “no” last month out of the blue.   This wasn’t something we actively taught her, it is something she picked up because we shake our heads unconsciously when we say no.    All on her own she put together that when we ask her a question with words and body language she can shake her head to indicate she’s not done or doesn’t want to and we respond.

This  is a big deal!  When we ask her with the baby sign and words, “Do you have to potty?”  she can shake her head, “No”.   Even better, if she’s on the toilet and isn’t finished she can shake her head and cross her arms “no” if not done!

We now realize in retrospect that the poop accidents the last couple of months weren’t always because she didn’t “know” or we missed a signal, but sometimes because we didn’t understand that she needed to sit for a while to do her business!  A good number of her accidents occured 5-20 minutes after a pee.   We were concerned about having her sit too long and she had no way to communicate to us that she was perfectly fine.     She poops twice a day (morning and evening) and she will willingly, happily, voluntarily sit there on the toilet for 10-20 minutes to do her thing .  If she’s not done she’ll give you a very emphatic head shake and cross her arms and absolutely refuse to be taken off the toilet.

This also means we can really trust her to know her own mind and we have given her 95% control over her pottying — it was more of a 80/20 split last month with her  taking the bulk of responsibility.    We still automatically take her to potty after a nap and first thing in the morning and ask her to try before we leave the house for an outing, but she can now shake her head “no”  and we do not remind her to go most of the time.

Night accidents continue to be zero (we pee once half way through our night — that means between 12am and 8am — though there are some nights now and then when she doesn’t pee until morning).   Day accidents are zero thus far...

100% Accident free:  4 weeks and counting…

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I was so worried about making her sit too long that I can now see that I wasn’t giving enough time and was the cause of some of the accidents.  Not all of them obviously, but some of them.   We couldn’t figure out why, at the time, why the accidents were occurring right after a potty break.   Was she doing it on purpose we wondered a few times?   But…why would she do that.  What would she be gaining to just pee on purpose in her pants considering that she didn’t like the feeling and would tell us she was wet?   We were really baffled.  We just kept on truckin’ and just waited for the phase to pass.  This was a “AHA!” moment.