Potty Training – Night

I brought forward night training when I kicked off the day training around month ago.

I decided to do so mainly due to the following reasons:

1.  Yvette is sometimes confused over to pee or not to pee.
2.  I really don’t like the idea of Yvette wearing the diaper for the entire night now.
3. Yvette used to be able to sleep thru the entire night without waking up for feeding. Now she needs to be nurse every now and then throughout the night time. I need to wake up to nurse her. So, must as well do it now.
4. In fact I have started doing part-time toilet training with Yvette while we were out and Yvette didn’t seem to have a problem over this.

Yvette prefers to pee into the sink, floor and sometimes bowl but hardly sit on the potty. Although Yvette wasn’t making tremendous progress in her day time training, but I guess this won’t hinder us for making this change. She is now able to signal when she wants to pee. (Sometimes she signaled to me after she had peed.) So I still have tons of misses which I guess this is inevitable.

How I manage to do it with her on our family bed?

We brought a thin layer mattress and lay over our bed. Use the waterproof mat as second layer of protection. Wrap Yvette using cloth diaper with a nappy cloth.

And how we were progressing last two nights?

24/07/09 – late night, she was put on the bed at 11 pm.

She peed into the sink twice before she slept. I missed once at 2 plus in the morning. I managed to bring her to pee twice at 4 plus and 7 plus in the morning when she stirred and tossed in her sleep.

25/07/09 – late night, she was put on the bed at 10.30 pm.

I missed once before she dozed off. I missed again at 12 plus in the midnight. Giving signal twice but she never pee during the night. She remained dry throughout the night till 9 am in the morning despite I did nurse her in between her sleep. However I did not catch her pee in the toilet. She got tensed up and refused to release when we were in the toilet. I caught her pee holding onto the nappy cloth while I nursing her in the morning.

The information provided by Ingrid Bauer from her book, Diaper Free! The Gentle Natural Infant Hygiene is so accurate. She claimed breastfed baby behave differently in the day and night. During the day, Yvette will definitely pee 5 to 20 mins after each feed. But in the night, she rarely need to.

I understand that a number of misses are inevitable at the beginning of the process and occasionally at other times. Even a conventionally toilet trained toddler or preschooler may go through many months or even years (8 months average) of transition between beginning toilet learning and becoming mostly “accident” free. Misses are not the norm or the focus, but they are part of the process, whether it’s Natural Infant Hygiene or conventional toilet training according to Ingrid Bauer.

I just hope I can establish a stronger communication with Yvette as we progress.