Yay us. Today was our first “2 nappy day”, and baby is just a week short of 8 months old. We missed some signals I think at lunch when we were at a cafe (so much going on for all of us), but it’s our best day so far.
Infant potty training really does rock, you gotta love no poopy pants to change.
Right now I’m in search of the perfect nappy bag. I’m not having a lot of luck, what I want is….
My last 2 nappy bags have failed on being a nice colour (both black), and one was not at all durable.
My current one is a nice bright yellow Koha messenger bag, but it doesn’t zip closed so stuff falls out all the time when it tips over.
Things that I don’t need
You wouldn’t think it was so much to ask for really!
Update: What I got in the end is an orange leather OiOi Hobo bag. It’s capacious and pretty, the only thing it lacks is the weather proofing flap over the zip but so far so good and it hasn’t leaked.
It all starts to pay off about now! My boy will go the whole day if we’re at home taking himself to the potty, only needing a nappy to sleep, and often we make it to the potty post sleep as well.
He can’t do his clothes himself yet, and he’s not keen to ask for help so we have to be nappy free at home, but hey, some longer shirts and the heating turned up and it’s all good.
My babe has been generally not a bad sleeper - not a fantastic sleeper, but not dreadful. That was until he turned 7 months, and into the sleeper from hell.
For starters I got a head cold, so wasn’t sleeping that well myself, and then he got the cold so wasn’t that chipper either. So we had a 2 week feeling rubbish lead in when the sleep deteriorated. Then for about a week, he was waking up every 2 ish hours and I was definitely hearing about it.
For the first time ever I was getting to 6am with a dry nappy, because he’d wake up screaming, and then I’d put him on the potty, he’d do a big pee, and after a cuddle go back to sleep. While having a dry nappy is nice it was seriously doing my head in being woken up every 3 hours again.
I even started reading various sleep related webpages, about how to do controlled crying etc to get them to go to sleep. What was really gutting was that he’d been quite good about putting himself back to sleep in the night and this was such a giant leap backwards.
He still has a bit of a snotty nose, so I decided to tough it out until that was better, and have been planning how to do the essence of controlled crying, preferably without the actual crying. I did notice that most of the crying technique things say you should get them better within 1-2 weeks.
Maybe reading the webpages was enough, because he’s a lot better now - back to sleeping 8 hours, waking for a quick feed, and then back to sleep for another 3-4 hours.
What did I do to achieve this? Pretty much nothing. I thought it was suspicious that various people I talked to said that their baby wasn’t sleeping so well at around the same age. So did think that perhaps it would just pass - sadly like sleeping 10 hrs straight a night just passed as well. I did put him into bed one night awake and do the controlled crying, without the crying - so more controlled grumbling while I did my teeth, and then comforted him & fed him when he cried.
I also started having cheese and crackers again for afternoon tea - I’ve noticed a definite correlation between my protein and fat intake and his sleeping over the months (more on that later).
So my lesson for next time I’m panicking about sleep is to first think about how long the changed behavior has been going for (a week isn’t a permanent change), to give it a bit longer before doing anything radical, and to make sure I’m eating enough at the right time of day so that the milk is good and sleep making!
Having a baby takes a lot of time. There is no way around it, feeding a new baby takes anywhere from 40 mins to 1.5 hrs especially once you take into account burping and general faffage time. If you think you’re going to do much else in the first few weeks with a first baby, then you’re pretty delusional (or maybe just a bit more organised than me).
One of the books I read said that on average a baby will cry for between 1 & 4 hrs a day! My baby didn’t cry for more than about 10 mins a day in 30 second bursts, I think because I tried to work out what the crying was for. All the books say that the crying is for something, and what B’s was generally for was a need to use the loo.
Each potty sit is for between 20 seconds & 3 minutes. I use a clock and would take him off after about a max of 5 minutes if he hadn’t asked to come off already.
That “time” comes out of his awake time anyway, so I guess we got to cut down on his grizzle time, and a bit more of our cuddles were in potty mode, but that’s quite nice really.
Anyway what else would you do with the time - the world has enough domestic goddesses surely?
There are a group of us doing infant potty catching here in Wellington, and we had a meeting about 10 days ago and I just thought I’d share my head slapper from that day.
We were talking about babies that seem to be a bit unsettled when feeding, and if you potty train, then you realise that they often just need to go to the loo - my young man certainly does that. Well for some reason I hadn’t translated that over into feeding solids, which we’ve not been doing so well with (gets a bit fidgety).
So today after our get together I finally clicked, so we did potty, then flash new pants on (cheers they fit lovely 
, then into the highchair, scoff a big pile of apple mush, get fidgety, out of highchair onto potty, and that’s our first “dry” lunch sequence.
Yay us, now we just have to work out the bit from about 5pm -> 7pm.
If you’re interested in joining the pottybabies support group then e-mail Lily dfbwgtn-at-paradise.net.nz and introduce yourself.
It was an all poos in the potty day today, which is always a good feeling - 5 months old and pooping like a trooper.
This was pretty much my goal with the infant potty training, especially as he starts on solids.
A headcold did indeed develop over the weekend - so lots of broken sleep, and snotty nose etc, plus his first tooth came through.
Pottying when feeling a bit under the weather (him) and tired (me) doesn’t go that well. I tend to be a bit less good at both timing and reading the signs, and he’s less good at giving me signals. I take the “don’t sweet the small stuff” approach in that case. He has got good though at protesting being put on the potty when he doesn’t need to go (and he’s usually right!).
Nanna visited with prototype one wet pants which is very exciting and might be back next week with the read deal. Aunty Liz visited with lots of new toys and books to amuse. Aunty Nicola visited with chocolate and a flash new coat - so all in all about as good a weeked as you can expect.
Yep it’s YABB (Yet another baby blog), but with some extra stuff about dog training thrown in so I can fool myself I still have a life.
Today I visited my GP, my 5 month old boy being due for his jabs. I’d decided to get him checked out first as he’d been a bit cranky. Turns out he has a wee ear infection (joy), and is teething (which I knew already). We talked about this and that, and I mentioned that “no he doesn’t get much of a rash on his bum, because most of his poos go into a potty”.
The first time I mentioned I was using a potty, my Dr thought I was a bit odd (well most people do to be fair). Today though she started to see the point and proclaimed “you should write a book”. That doesn’t fit with my already fairly crammed lifestyle I protest - looking after baby, running a company, failing to train my dogs….. “you should start a blog then, on babies and dog training”.
So there you go - it’s all her fault.
Topics for discussion I think will be
* Infant pottying, aka elimination communication
* Infant sign language
* Breastfeeding & mother feeding for successful breastfeeding
* Puppy & dog training
* Clicker training
And I might finally write my rant about the the maddness that was my pregnancy.