dtm | De fimo

It's been a long time since I posted, and I told

jmartin2 that I'd make the next livejournal update of this kind since she's been doing a lot of that lately.

Anyway, if you've been reading her journal, you know that

jmartin2 and I have been trying to get our daughter Katherine potty-trained. The basic way this works is that she gets all excited about wearing underwear, and then refuses to go sit on the potty and do anything while dancing around uncomfortably.

Actually, that's not quite true. She's usually happy to sit on the potty and pee, although we occasionally need to prompt her to do so, and if she doesn't feel as though she has to go, she won't even consider the possibility. (We're not yet to the stage where we can say "go now before we go on this long car trip" and have her try to do something; her response is often "no, I don't have to go", which only gets louder and stronger if we insist)

However, pooping is another matter. She generally doesn't like it. A week or so ago, she simply announced to me that she was "not going to poop any more". (This was said with great solemnity and finality) I asked, and apparently her anti-defecation resolution included both the potty and the diaper.

Now, while that's not actually physically possible for a child to do, it is possible for a child to cause themselves a large amount of pain and discomfort trying to achieve this goal. (Apparently, it's not at all uncommon for children to go through a stage like this when doing potty training, especially girls) Since her declaration, she has in fact successfully pooped on the potty twice and although she was very happy afterward, each time involved lots of crying and fidgeting and even my holding her on the potty for a minute or so. Clearly, it's a source of a great deal of discomfort and possibly embarrassment.

So we've been trying various strategies to deal with this, and last night apparently feeding her mostly fruit paid off: at bathtime, after she'd gotten undressed she just spontaneously sat on the toilet herself and pooped without any complaining or crying or screaming. She had been doing a little bit of a potty dance earlier in the evening, and I'd tried to get her to use the potty, but she just sat down and almost immediately stood back up, declaring that there was nothing for her to do. (In the past that has been a signal that she has to poop, but really doesn't want to)

So, anyway, stress-free poop. It's not a big deal, except when it's preceded by entirely too long a time full of stress and self-induced constipation.