Night-time potty training regression after teething and poor sleep in toddler

[Mattybpxv]

Hi all,

My wife and I followed the Oh Crap! Potty Training method and went for both day and night training simultaneously. We started at 28 months. The first three weeks were fantastic. We had gotten to the point with night training of only one wakeup and our daughter was able to go seven hours and we were working on pushing it longer.

And then it happened...
She started to push her last two, two-year molars. It was a solid two months before we were on the other side of the teeth. Add to that separation anxiety and frequent nights with three hour periods of being awake for seemingly no reason. We've made it through the separation anxiety as well. Now back to the potty training.

Her daytime training didn't really suffer. She had a few accidents but we realized we were over prompting and corrected that within two days or so but the nighttime training really suffered. We've yet to be able to get back to only one wakeup at night and she can barely make it four hours during the night. Some nights she's had up to five accidents during the night and others are accident free. The accident free nights are much more infrequent.

On top of this our daughter isn't the best sleeper. She'll wake up randomly throughout the night saying mommy, daddy, mommy, daddy, as if a dream had woken her up. She needs just a minute or so of comforting and she's back to sleep. I know poor sleep can help contribute to the regression and it seems like we can't get back to the point of a decent nights rest.

So my questions for everyone are has anyone ever run into this and if so, what have you tried to correct the regression? Has anyone tried lemon balm to help your kid get a better night's sleep? Our daughter is now 32 months old.

Any help is appreciated!

Matt

It's a while since I read the Oh Crap book, but I thought they didn't recommend trying to do night time training at the same time as day time training?

32 months is pretty young to be reliably dry at night. I'd stick her back in nappies/pullups overnight and try and work on the sleep regression first as a separate issue.

The book was really vague about night training. There were just a few pages that said try to determine when your kid pees and consolidate and doing it all at once was the best way. Had we known the last two teeth were going to be such a nightmare, we wouldn't have done night training.

I thought night time was meant to be partly hormonal? Tbh I never actually night trained mine. Once they reliably had a dry pull up in the morning, they stopped wearing one. I'd go back to pull ups for night.

You can’t really train overnight, they just grow out of it at their own pace. It’s mostly hormonal and if she is having 5 wees overnight she’s definitely not ready yet.
Just put her in an overnight nappy until it’s dry most mornings

I was just reading up on the hormone, ADH, which slows the kidney function. I really wish we knew about this prior to starting "night training".

It feels like we're stuck. Our daughter is a light sleeper and used to wake up and say "mama, pee pee" before she had an accident. That was prior to the teeth coming in. It was yet another step forward that was lost.

The five pees was a rarity. I had just wanted to highlight the inconsistency but to your point she was definitely not ready and still isn't.

I'm just trying to wrap my head around why we can't get back to the point we were at when we started four months ago. She communicates much better and has much better daytime control, often able to go for four hours. It just doesn't make any sense to me that we're worse off with the night time training than when we started.

It could be she is drinking more (due to sore teeth or the weather). It could be she is sleeping heavier than before e.g. more tired.

Unless she is resistant, I would put her in pull ups overnight and explain that she can still get up to use the toilet, but this way if she doesn't wake up, she won't have to get changed when she does wake up.

Once she is ready, it should be straightforward and you won't have to start again. Mine had a handful of accidents ever. My DD potty trained in the day at 2.5 and the njght at 4. My DS did day and night at 3.3.