if you’ve known me for longer than 6 months or have been reading this blog for any length of time, you know all about layla’s potty issues. if not, you can be enlightened here, here, here, here, or here, should you so desire. the gist of it is this, layla has been potty trained since january of 2008, when she was about 2 1/2. she had some poop issues after that (the first ‘here’) but got over them relatively quickly, although it was incredibly annoying until she did. then in the spring, she started wetting her pants periodically. she would have ‘accident days’, as i called them. she’d be completely dry some days, and other days she’d have like 5 accidents. as we moved into summer, it became more and more often, and i started complaining to the doctor about it. he had her pee in a cup like 4 different times to see if she had a bladder infection. that always came back negative. then, it got to the point where she would be wet like every 15 minutes. like she had no control whatsoever. we were referred to a pediatric urologist, who refused to see a child younger than 5 or 6 – believing that anyone younger, was just experiencing potty training issues. but the call to that place got me a list of foods and beverages that commonly irritate the bladder, so we started eliminating things from her diet. this was a long, frustrating, and confusing process because just when we seemed to have identified something, some incident would muddle the information and we’d really have no clue if it was just a coincidence or not. finally in september, we got a referral to an allergist, thinking that an allergy could be causing it, and skin tests would certainly be more conclusive than our shot in the dark elimination diets. we finally saw the allergist in november and got the exciting news that layla is allergic to nothing. so i decided to just back track and try some old fashioned sticker charts, just to see if we could get her in better ‘habits’. well, shock of shocks, it worked. in december, layla completed her chart of something like 24 days w/out accidents, and earned herself a trip to chuck e. cheese. book closed, problem solved, issue OVER.
not so much.
in the two weeks, layla has started having accidents again. sometimes multiple in one day. grrrrrr! it makes me so mad because i thought we were totally done with this! what is it? why now? is it just because it’s nice out and she’s outside more? has she grown and her bladder not kept up? is she allergic to the sun? to sunscreen? is she just lazy when playing outside? there does seem to be a pattern of this happening when the weather is nicer. she never had accidents when she was playing outside in the winter. at any rate, i’m back to setting a timer for the time being, and she has to come in and use the potty every hour. aaagggghhhhh! i’m so frustrated by this!
she probably doesn't even realize that she has to go because she is so busy playing outside. Lily usually waits until she is desperate before she will actually go to the bathroom while playing outside.
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