Mid-night Tinkles

Over the weekend, something clicked with Ayden's concept of potty using.  He actually had a bit of a regression (aka LOTS of accidents) before this happened which was interesting.  We aren't really expecting him to learn to use the potty 100% this early but we do want to set the stage so that when he's ready he can.  For now, he is wearing undies (Gerber training underwear) at home and diapers at night as well as when we are out and about.  He is using his little potty for the most part, though he is beginning to show interest in sitting on the "big potty."

Ayden has been woken up by nighttime pees alot over his two year little life.  It is yet another contributer to his frequent night waking.  Our cloth diaper amonia issues help us put two and two together here.  We'd smell pee and he'd wake up or he'd wake us up crying and we'd smell pee.  Well last night he, after a pretty amazing potty using day (he asked to use the potty EVERY time, even for #2) he continued requesting the potty into the night.  

This poses a delima for us.  Do we go along with the eagerness to potty learn and get up with him in the night for him to pee?  Do we encourage him to just go in his diaper at night even though we are so excited and proud for him to use the potty during the day?  We ended up getting up with him twice.  The first time he went and the second time he just wanted to read books (hence our hesitation to take him to the potty in the night).  The times we did not get up with him he cried himself back to sleep.  

One thing we are changing is that we are starting to use books as a reward.  He can pick a book and look at it himself while he is on the potty and the we will read it to him once he's gone.  We are making this change because he had started using the potty as  and extra story time opportunity without actually using the potty MANY times throughout the day. We don't want mid-night story time to become a habit.... If he were old enough to tell him the story about the boy who cried wolf we would, haha.  

Needless to say, today was really rough for us.  I was super exhausted because I had stayed up late on top of the midnight tinkle issue and Ayden was SUPER clingy and fussy all morning.

He spent most of the morning like this.
I can't even count the amount of times baby wearing has saved the day!

When he started showing signs he was ready for a nap around 10:30 it made my day!  I, of course, joined him and an hour later woke up feeling like myself.

It will be interesting to see how tonight goes.  We like to make sure new behaviors really are new "things" before we worry too much about how we are going to handle them.  Overall, we are really excited about and proud of his potty using efforts and definitely want to encourage them.  

Did your toddler start waking up to potty in the night?  How did you handle it?

~Sarah

Flashback!  Here's what we were up to one year ago today: "Proud Papa"

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