It has been a busy week around here with our little Reagan potty training, which inadvertently lead to the start of Elsie's sleep training. So much for the rest 'prescribed' to me by my midwife. I was planning on waiting until October to potty train Reagan, so to give myself more time to settle in our routines with Elsie. But she started showing interest in the potty so we started having her sit on it here and there, nothing major. She peed in her potty for the first time last week and last weekend Craig worked with her a ton and let her go without a diaper most of the day. Since then Reagan has really taken off! She will not keep a diaper on, hens we are full on potty training. I set the timer to remind myself and had her sit on her potty every 20 minutes Monday, Tuesday and Wed. She has had a few accidents but overall has done really well! She has even predicted and gone herself many times, but still requires lots of reminding and promoting (of course). It is always hard for kids to stop playing to go sit on the potty. I gave her the choice, "You can go sit on your potty or put a diaper on" and since she is so anti- diaper, it is working. I let her go bare butt on Monday but decided I wanted to practice underwear and not let her get use to being naky. We had such trouble getting Katya to stay dry in underwear after letting her go naky for a long time. She is doing really well! Today was R's first time out of the house in undi's, both to take Katya to school and pick her up.
So we did have a poop debacle the other day. As I said, R doesn't want to keep diapers on and sure enough, she took it off during nap time (rest time in our house). Katya, who was 'resting' with her, went and got Reagan's potty for her and she did pee in it. I separated the girls because they were not staying in bed and staying quiet and without thinking I put Reagan in our room with her potty, without her diaper. It dawned on me a while later, as I was feeding Els and soothing her to sleep, that Reagan had not pooped yet that day. I put Elsie down as soon as I dared and went in our room to find Reagan covered in poop. She said proudly, "I pooped in my potty!" She had in fact pooped in her potty, and I can only imagine what followed. There was a small piece of (clean) toilet paper covering the BM in her potty and she had poop on her hands, arms, belly, legs, feet, and of course, her butt.
I threw Reagan in the tub and started scrubbing her down, of course Elsie started screaming almost immediately. But I had to leave her and deal with the pressing issue at hand. Elsie cried hard for 10 minutes and then fell asleep! She slept for 4 hours. In the evening. When her naps are always the worst. It truly was a blessing in disguise; grossly disguised. Whoever said God doesn't have a sense of humor....
To my own credit, I had been thinking that very day that I should try letting Els cry for 5-10 minutes to see if she will sleep. I did actually try it that morning to no avail. It is so hard because she is only 11 weeks old and I want to be sure that she is developing secure attachments. Much study has shown that infants who don't develop proper attachments to their caregiver(s) in those first, critical few months of life can have dependency issues later in life. Because of this, and because of Dr. Wesinbluth's suggestion for colicy infants, I wanted to wait til 16 weeks to sleep train. But Craig and I had already decided we would start at 3 months, 13 weeks old (for many reasons). Elsie's colic has ended (Praise Jesus!) and we don't want her, and us, to continue to rely on poor sleep habits. So that night after her usual routine of bath, bottle, lots of snuggling and soothing from mom, I put her in her swing (with it on) and left. She fussed and cried half-heatedly for 15 minutes and then was out. She slept great. She was out by 8:15pm, woke once at 2:30, and was up for the day at 8:15am. Success! Well, partial success. She slept great, and by herself, but still in her swing and still with the help of motion.
This post is getting really long so I will continue the sleep training discussion later.
No comments:
Post a Comment