Mama PlaygroundA Blog for Moms

For quite some time I thought those words would be magical, welcome, and the anticipated ending to the use of diapers for one of my children. In my mind the diapers were piling up at landfills and it was my fault. The diapers my toddler was producing were unbearable. They were no longer little baby poops. I gagged, held my breath, took small breathing breaks away from the changing table. I begged for her cooperation, cajoled, prayed it would be over. Well, at exactly 2 1/2 years old a few months ago she was completely potty trained. Now, I hear those words all the time and it is not quite the magic I had hoped for.

It turns out that only thing holding my child back was the fact that her two young siblings (twins born 1 1/2 years her junior) were wearing appealing diapers. After I transitioned them to the most boring ones I could find she was done with diapers. She rarely has “accidents”, not even during naps. The pooping part of potty training took an extra week. She held out on going poo for a week. She literally got constipated and weird about her poo. Then she hid and had a couple of disgusting poo events that week. She loved her big girl undies and had no pee accidents at all, and I couldn’t wait for her to just try one poop in the potty and I knew it would be no problems after that.

Flash forward a few months: she poops in the potty. Actually, she loves to poop in the potty. “Oh, wow mama! That was a lot of poo!” It is not quite the glory that I thought. I still had a month or so of helping to wipe and it was gross. I also had to sit in the room with her and read her stories and hang out while she pooped for that month or so. This was also gross. And now she is so completely comfortable with it that she will declare it loudly, proudly, and across a department store full of people. On paper, I am so very glad, but it is a bit embarrassing in front of other people and I can’t bring myself to shame her. So when she yelled across Macy’s the other day, I paused only long enough to pretend no one else was there, compose myself, and exclaim “oh yay! Poo poos!!!”