Night-Training

Just like I had all these plans in place for potty-training (and, you know, they all fell through and went crazy and Willow decided that her plans were better), so too did I have plans in place for night-training.  And so too did those plans get kicked out the window.

About a week and a half in to our toilet-training smackdown, Willow woke up in the night moaning "I have to go."  Dave went in, was negotiating with her, and I (half asleep, and not even noticing he was in there because it's usually me she's calling--not this time, which should tell you something) wandered in, and told her "Oh, sweetie, it's okay, you can just go in your diaper."

Yep.  Parent of the year, that's me.

In my defense, according to my plans and research, waiting a good long while for potty-training to set in is the way to go, and it's either just going to work on its own, with no getting up in the night to pee, just magically waking up dry someday, or it's going to be waiting until it's really time, and then stripping off the diaper and letting them wet the bed and feel how uncomfortable it is and that'll do it.  Obviously I was hoping for the magical waking up dry one.  But the third option, the getting up in the night to pee, I wasn't really willing to consider as a possibility, because yo, this girl pees every three hours, and won't stripping her down out of her footie pjs really wake her up, and doesn't that basically put us right back in the days of waking every two or three hours to nurse, for crying out loud, and I'm so not ready to do that again.

Of course, come morning, Dave confronted me about my ranking selfish need for sleep over my daughter's really very impressive self-directed potty-training the in the night, and how perhaps my approach was not the best, from a parenting standpoint.  And I agreed grudgingly that if she really, really wanted to pee in the night, he could take her, but I wasn't getting up with her.  All of you other moms out there, just give up the competition for Mom of the Year, because I have got it locked down.  

 (Honestly, I was exhausted from the potty-training.  This seemed like trying to take the SATs just after learning to read). 

Of course, the next night, we both got up with her, because getting a child in and out of footie pjs and the stool set up and diapers put on and off is a job for more than one parent when at least one of said parents is incapable of letting somebody else handle things even when she says she wants him to.

And so began a pattern of getting up at one or two a.m. (just me, after that first night) and thankfully, it wasn't that big a deal.  Willow went right back to sleep each time, and if I didn't, well, at least I wasn't sitting up rubbing her back or singing songs or something.  And then that pattern changed to getting up at 5 am, and then to 6 am, and then to 6 am but not needing to go until 7:30, and anyway we've gotten rid of all our diapers now.

I am beyond proud of my kid, and more than a little ashamed of myself.  I can take no credit for this one, in fact I was as obstructive as possible, but Willow did it anyway.  Rock on, kiddo.