Help, please - we are in potty training hell!
All started well when we started training with DS in August. We went cold turkey and he was basically clean and dry after the first few days.
We then had a pretty good couple of months, with very few accidents, but looking back we did get into a bit of a routine of reminding DS to go at regular intervals, so he wasn't really taking the responsibility for himself.
Also, I made the mistake of not pushing the toilet seat in the early stages, as it seemed a bit inconsistent, having been bigging up his achievements on the potty, to suddenly insist that he should now forget about that and use the big toilet instead.
Am now massively regretting this, as 4 months on, I have to carry his potty around whenever we go out as he refuses to use anything but his big blue Baby Bjorn!
But the bigger issue is that he has now started to resist going to the potty for a wee or poo until the very last minute, when he is absolutely desperate and can't hang on any longer. This means we have up to an hour beforehand of wriggling, increasing agitation, clambouring all over parents saying 'I need a cuddle' and toing and froing from the bathroom, with DS saying 'I need a wee... I don't need a wee... I need a wee... etc etc'.
He still very rarely has an accident, but how to make the whole process much less of a palaver??
Rewards for sitting on the potty did work for a while, but now he claims not to want them (stickers/smarties etc) while he is in his state of resistance. Then, when he has finally done his business, he will request his 'prize', but by now, he is totally calm and back to his happy self anyway, so the reward is not really working to cut out the hideous lead-up to the actual use of potty.
Would really appreciate some help to disentangle all this, as not sure quite where to start to put things 'right'.
Am actually expecting new DD next month and appreciate that we may have some further regression, but would like to at least try to make things calmer/easier between now and then.