Potty Training (Part Two, The Peequeal.)

In my last post, (which I strongly suggest you read before you read this post) I wrote about how I had peed in my bathtub. Not a lot of pee. Just a few drops. (I chose the bathtub because if my pStyle experiment went horribly wrong the clean up would be a lot easier in the tub than my bathroom floor.) A few days after I posted that, I tried again. I had been paying more attention to the act of urinating. I focused on what my body was doing, and discovered that peeing is less about pushing the fluid out of your body and more of an opening sensation. So I tried the pStyle, not with an overly full bladder, but with just a regular need to pee, and had complete success! I didn't get a drop on my hand, and initially none on my legs. But as the flow began to hit the tub floor, I realized just what a horrible idea peeing in the bathtub really was.

The laws of splash back are, I found out, that the the longer the distance the fluid travels before hitting a solid surface, the higher the splash back can bounce. Which translates to pee splattering my legs from the mid-calf down.  I should have bought stock in soap and bathtub cleaner before I started this.

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So now I can do the act. What's my next step? Toilet training obviously. But I wasn't going to go into this blindly like I did the first step. I did my research. I googled "potty training tips". I'll admit, I was nervous about what I would find. I was worried that the information I would uncover would make me lose respect for my parents. After all, I'm 25 years old. They really should have trained me to use the toilet by now. But on the first website I found, I read "The pressure is off parents to toilet train early. Don't equate toilet-training with good mothering. The idea that the earlier baby is eating three squares a day, weaned, toilet trained, and independent, the "better" the mother is nonsense." Thank god. I can't wait to console my parents that they were, are and always will be good parents. Free thinking parents, who let their children choose when they're ready to use the "big girl" potty and even let the children teach themselves. Imagine what a wonderful world it would be if all parents took this approach.

Everything I found online listed two main approaches to toilet training. One being a gradual weaning of the use of diapers. The other being an intensive training over a few days. I felt that 25 years was long enough to wait to be trained, I wanted this to be over as quickly as possible. Potty boot camp was about to begin!

I waited until the weekend, so that I could spend as much time at home as possible. Since the weather was  nice and warm, I also chose to wear no pants. There would be no "accidents" just because I couldn't get my overalls unsnapped in time. And every hour or so I would ask myself if I need to go potty. Even if I said "No", I encouraged myself to "just try". After the first day, I was accident free and using the toilet exclusively to poop and pee. To poop, I sat on the seat of the toilet, and had set up a stash of picture books to flip through so that using the toilet would be a positive experience. To pee, I made a game out of aiming. A few cheerios dropped into the toilet bowl became targets! I also rewarded myself with stickers every time I successfully went to the potty. By the second day I was still accident free, and aiming like a champ, no cheerio was left un-peed-on. And as it turns out, splash back is GREATLY reduced when liquids are hitting another liquid.

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It's been a week since I toilet trained myself. I have been wearing pants again, and still no accidents. I am so proud of myself! I may never pee on myself again. Unless I'm stung by a jellyfish. Then I'll just have to put cheerios on the sting.