My 2-year-old is Potty Trained! (Early Potty Training Reprise)

My 2yo is potty trained! She is consistently dry night and day and wears underwear during the day. She announces every time she needs to use the bathroom and always wants company. She still has occasional accidents (only at home, usually outside) and is sometimes reluctant to use the potty if she needs to poop.

I've been putting my third child on the potty since she was 5 months old. By 9 months she rarely pooped in a diaper and by 15 months she was also peeing in the potty more often than she was in her diaper. A couple of months ago, she was reliable enough that I packed up all the cloth training pants and all but a few cloth diapers (I still put a prefold and cover on her at night, just in case).

Early Potty Training Reprise

For those who like to see the end from the beginning, here is a summary of my experience potty training my third child. You can find additional details about each stage in the process by clicking on the links to go to the individual posts. You can also find links to all my potty training posts on my Early Potty Training page.

4 Months
Baby spends some time diaper-free most days. I make cue sounds when she pees and poops and change wet diapers immediately.

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The Poop Report: Diapering and Pottying at 21 Months

Sometime in the last month of so, I started to think of my 21-month-old toddler as more or less potty trained. Or, at least, I'm no longer really making any active effort to train her. Here are some reasons why:

• She used a toilet in a public restroom (with my assistance, of course) two days in a row.
• She regularly announces that she needs to pee and poop and then goes to the bathroom with me.
• She is always dry in the morning and after naps.
• She almost never has an accident outside of the house. I can't remember the last time we had to restock the back-up underwear and pants in my van.
• She has taken off her underpants and used the potty by herself (although this is still an infrequent occurrence).
• We often go more than a week without washing cloth diapers (mostly training pants/underwear and wipes these days).

She still has accidents regularly. I'm going to guesstimate 2 to 5 a week. The main reasons for accidents are:

• She needs to poop and doesn't want to. I have learned that when my daughter refuses to pee even though I know she needs to go (for example, it's 2 hours after she woke up dry from a nap), it's probably because she needs to poop and doesn't want to. I have to pull out all the stops to get her on the potty in these situations.
• She's playing outside. Usually I'm not outside with her, but sometimes even when I am. For some reason, she just feels A-OK about peeing in her pants in the great outdoors. When I remember, I try to get her to use the potty before playing outside. A few times she has taken off her shoes and come inside to tell me she needed to go, but that is (not surprisingly) very rare.

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The Poop Report: Diapering and Pottying at 18 Months

For links to every post I've ever written about early potty training, visit my Early Potty Training page.

18-month Potty Update

Right around when my daughter hit 17 months, I realized that she had been dry day and night for 4 days straight save one accident. I felt like we had turned a corner.

Luckily, I was also smart enough to realize that this was probably not the end of my third potty training adventure. The truth is, my toddler definitely knows how to both use the potty and how to hold it. But often she has other priorities.  So here's how things have been since that blissful 4-day stretch.

My 18-month-old is consistently dry at night. 
I'd say she wakes up wet maybe once every two weeks. That's nursing to sleep, sleeping 11 or more hours, nursing several times at night (sometimes awake and crying several times at night because she's sick or because molars are coming in), and then waiting 10 or more minutes to use the potty after waking up, and still staying dry.

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The Poop Report: Diapering and Pottying at 15 Months

Potty

I've been putting my third child on the potty since she was about 5 months old. Now at 15 months, I feel like we are in the home stretch. She goes in the potty many more times per day than she goes in her diaper. In fact, one day recently she exclusively used the potty. She went zero times in her diaper for an entire day! Another day, only one wet diaper. However, then there are the days when she refuses to sit on the potty and then wanders off diaper-free to the living room and pees a huge puddle on the floor. If there is one term I would use to describe this period it is Hit and Miss. It's mostly hit, but the misses tend to be fairly annoying and memorable.

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The Poop Report: Diapering and Pottying at One Year

Sometimes my 3yo entertains my 1yo on the potty for me.

Potty
My one-year-old reliably uses the potty when she wakes up in the morning and after her two naps. In fact, I will even leave her in a Kissaluvs fitted diaper with no waterproof cover for a nap because I know she will not pee on the bed when she wakes up. She'll wait until we put her on the potty. And she occasionally wakes up dry in the morning too. She will pee many more times on the potty if we put her on it. One day I realized around 5 pm that she was still in the same diaper I'd put her in that morning. We go through few enough diapers that often I realize I haven't washed diapers for five or six days. Once I ran out of cloth wipes before anything else.

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The Poop Report: Diapering and Pottying at 9 Months

I love letting my 9-month-old wear a Kissaluvs fitted diaper
(without cover) around the house.

Potty
My 9-month old pees and poops on the potty every morning. Maybe twice a month she only pees without pooping. And here's the really crazy thing. Two days in the last month she has woken up completely dry. That's 10+ hours in the same diaper, folks. Dry. And that's how I know that babies can hold it.

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The Poop Report: Diapering and Pottying at 7 Months

Unbleached prefold inside a Thirsties cover: my current preferred
method for cloth diapering my 7-month-old baby.

Potty
My 7-month-old baby uses the potty every morning to go #1 and #2. Her diaper is often dry after naps, and I put her on the potty then and at other times of the day if I feel like it. She rarely poops in her diaper. I haven't had to change a poopy diaper for at least a week. The conventional wisdom -- that children can't be potty trained until 2 or 3 years -- is still so ingrained in my mind, that the novelty and thrill of my baby doing her business in the potty has not worn off, even though we've been doing this for 2+ months.

Cloth Diapers
My favorite cloth diaper choice at the moment: unbleached prefold (in thirds) inside a Thirsties cover. But she's growing out of the small, and my medium size Thirsties covers are pretty shot after heavy use by two other children. After consulting with the good people at Jillian's Drawers, I have ordered some Flip covers, because they have snap closures, and a flap to hold the prefold. The new Thirsties-duo covers have a snap closure, but don't have the flap I know and love. I'll let you know how I like the Flip covers. Unbleached prefold inside a waterproof cover is my preferred diaper on-the-go as well.

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Early Potty Training at 6 Months

For the past several weeks, my baby has made a deposit in the potty every single morning. We are well beyond this being a fluke.I've been putting her on the potty first thing in the morning for nearly a month. If I get her on the potty really fast, often her diaper is barely wet at all. Ninety percent of the time she pees and poops. And on those days I rarely have to change a poopy diaper. She spends five to ten minutes on the potty at a time. I still have to hold her on the potty as she doesn't yet have the control to sit up unassisted.

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My 5-month-old Baby Uses the Potty

Happy Earth Day last Sunday!

For 4 of the last 5 days, I have put my 5-month-old baby on the potty first thing in the morning. And all 4 times she has both peed and pooped (sometimes an incredible amount). Of course I make my "pssss" and "uh uh uh" cue sounds when she does. So we are having some success. I'm smart enough to know that it won't necessarily be smooth sailing from here out. I'm just trying to be happy that wiping her bottom has been so very simple during this past week.

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Potty Training a 4-month-old Baby

Yesterday I wrote about how early potty training turned out with my second child, now 2 1/2 years old. I first put her on the potty around 9 months. Today, I'm writing about how I'm starting even earlier with my third baby.

What does early potty training (or elimination communication) look like with a 4-month-old baby? Some folks try to "catch" a newborn's pee by holding a bowl between their knees or holding the baby over the sink or toilet when she needs to pee. I tried that once and decided it wasn't for me. I decided to wait until my baby could pretty comfortably sit on a Baby Bjorn little potty before I would try any pee/poop catching.

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