Please help - feeling utterly exhausted and don't know what to do!

[Ellaroo]

I wonder if any of you can give me some potty-training advice. DD is going to be 3 in two months time and she was showing lots of interest in the toilet, knew when she was doing a poo and desperately wanted to wear big girls pants, so this week we started potty-training. We are on day 3 with it and she is just constantly wetting herself. Each day we have used between 12 and 17 pairs of knickers. She doesn't seem to have any desire to tell me before she is about to go and today while doing a poo she refused to go on the potty at all and wouldn't sit down on it. She spends most of her time doing 'pretend wees and poos' on it, but refuses to do the real thing there. I get the feeling she is holding the wee in to avoid the potty, then lets a bit out and wets her knickers and then stops it mid-flow, I put her on the potty and she can't go, then I put fresh knickers on her and then she lets the rest come out. What should I do, is this normal, should I be having more success on day 3? I have a 14 week old baby to look after too and am finding it difficult to juggle both things, but really want to get it done in the summer holidays as her nursery either take children in nappies or potty-trained, but not the inbetween stage as they don't want the children to suffer the humiliation of wetting themselves infront of their friends. This makes good sense to me and I don't want to have to put her back in nappies come September. Husband is complaining the house smells of wee and I have never had such an exhausting day and just feel like crying. What should I do??? Thanks.

Ellaroo,

If your husband 'insists' it should be persevered with, well then let him bloody do it !!!

I posted earlier, the fact that she knows she needs to go doesn't necessarily mean she's quite ready yet to be potty trained. She may not know soon enough to get there, or may just be unable to move when the urge to go takes her.

In the current circs, I wouldn't to the vaccinations trip without protection, it's just making life too hard for all 3 of you.

Nothing really to add to this good advice, except to add to the 'going commando' route. My Dss always weed/pooed when wearing pants/pullups etc. They only got upset and really noticed what they were doing if they did it without anything on. I figured that wearing anything is too similar to wearing nappies.

Re house smelling of wee, we used pet accident sprays on our carpets. Kleeneze did a really good one, that cleaned and disinfected, and we never had any lingering odours.

Good luck!

Ellaroo, you've had some fab advice about this already, which I can't add to really except for the following.

I found it really, really helped to have a couple of days of 1 to 1 potty training time with ds1 (was same age as your dd when I did my 2nd attempt). I sent dh out at the weekend with ds2 (8months) two days in a row. I gave him a short list of places he could go, plus everything he needed to stay out and not come back until an allotted time.

This really helped me to focus on ds1 and I found the undivided attention really helped (he'd been sorely missing it really because of ds2).

If dh wants you to persevere, this could be a way he can help you achieve that, plus he's out of the wee smell..

What are his plans this weekend?

ps if you decide to stop and try again later, book him in for his quality time with the baby, while you relaunch toilet training with dd.

I hasten to add, it took longer than 2 days, but they really helped to cement some of the ideas I was trying to get across and we got to spend some quality time together (I relaxed about it, so he did too).