No more?

I know it's probably too damn early to talk about this, but I don't care.  This morning Emily woke up dry for the third day in a row wearing....underwear!!  Halleluiah!

For the past couple of months, her pull up has been dry 4-6 mornings a week so she is back to the success rate she had been at before Ryan moved out.  I was going to wait till her pull up was consistently dry 7 days a week for several weeks before calling it and switching to underwear.  But then I had a thought...while I do wholeheartedly believe she is peeing in her sleep and it is not a conscious decision, I did wonder if maybe her pull up was a subconscious crutch. 

She was dry most days, but maybe the days she woke up wet her body knew there was a backup.  Like....she's doing well enough to be dry most days, but it wasn't a big deal on the few nights she did pee in her sleep because so what, it's just a wet pull up.  She was used to that.  There have been a handful of times in the last 6 months or so that we just plain forgot to put a pull up on before bed, and all those times she woke up dry.

Those could have been coincidences and she would have been dry no matter what....or, maybe her subconscious was like oh hey, she doesn't have a diaper on, I can't just give in and go.  I know that sounds a little crazy, but I think the subconscious is a powerful thing.  She's been on winter break this week, so I thought it was a good time to test it out so if she did wet the bed, we wouldn't have to deal with it on a busy school morning.

Sunday night she spent the night at my dad's because I had to be at a work conference early the next morning and it was an hour's drive, so she stayed with him and then he just watched her all day while I was at the conference.  I figured it wasn't the best idea to start it then in a bed other than her own...and it's been quite a while since she stayed the night there, so I didn't want any unfamiliarity to have an effect. 

The tricky thing is, she's staying the night with him again tonight.  She was going to go there tomorrow so I could go into the office, but she had so much fun the other night, she requested another slumber party for tonight.  We're going to stick with the underwear thing, and hopefully being in a different bed won't affect things....but at least she did just spend the night there a few days ago, so that ought to help with being more comfortable.  And if all fails, we just try again the next night at home. 

I do believe kids have to be ready and their bodies have to be ready, but I wanted to test my theory of using the pull up as a crutch and if it didn't work it just meant I did a shit ton of laundry and go back to pull-ups every night.  Hopefully, we can just be pull up free from here on out, and if she does have an accident here and there, we just wash the sheets and move on.  After all, when you're day training and the kid has an accident, you don't just toss up your hands and go back to diapers full time.  So as long as she continues to be dry most days, we'll just keep at it and hope that waking up wet and yucky will be the deterrent she needs to wake up dry more and more till she's dry all the time.

Ugh, if this could be it, if I don't have to buy any more pull-ups I would be so happy.  Nobody tells you this stuff before you have kids.  I was so damn cocky when I got her potty trained at 2.  When I worked at the daycare, I hated the potty trainers (well not the kids themselves).  I would rather do all the diaper changes than deal with the trainers.  So when it came to my own kid, I was seriously dreading having to potty train her, but it went amazingly well.  Aside from the very occasional accident, she was fully day trained within 3-4 weeks.  I thought yes, I got this, I rock at this motherhood/potty training thing.  And then she was still in pull-ups for night time FOR 4 MORE YEARS!

Now granted, she was almost there...she was dry 4-6 days a week when she was 4, but then Ryan and I split up and she seriously regressed.  So had it not been for that, I think she would have been pull-up free a long long time ago, but such is life.  Had we stayed together, our constant fighting would have affected her in other ways and more seriously. 

I think it's a great sign that she even asked if she can wear underwear to bed at her dad's house too.  I have her this weekend, so by the time he has her again, I should know how well she's doing and as long as she's dry most days I hope he will just risk having to do laundry and not put her back in a pull up if she has an accident.  I'm not sure how successful we'll be if she's in underwear every night except 4-5 nights a month at his house.  But we'll see.  Think good thoughts and pray for me that I never have to buy pull-ups again, lol.

Dreams

I had a dream last night that I had another baby, and she was Emily's clone.  It was like raising Emily all over again.  I told my stepmom about it today, and she said you were dreaming of Kayla.  Until she said that, I hadn't even considered that possibility, but now that I thought about it, current-day Emily was not in the dream.  I just wanted to share that, before I forgot.