My Little Ladies: We are potty trained!! Just kidding, it was a total failure.

We have been talking about potty training for a few months and even had two training potties and 28 pair of princess underwear, but I just couldn't seem to pull the trigger. First, I had to wait until I felt they were old enough- 22 months seemed to be the magic age according to the method I was going to follow. Then my pregnancy became more complicated and we figured it wasn't worth risking the extra activity. As my due date approaches nearer (6 weeks!) I had a sense of now or never...or at least not for 5-6 more months.

I read 3 Day Potty Training by Lora Jensen about 13 times. I knew that I could stick to the method- stay at home for 3 full days, put your child (or children in my case) in a shirt and underwear, load them up with fluids, watch them like a hawk and prompt them with cues such as, "Let mommy know when you have to pee" and underwear checks to see if they are dry and lots and lots of praise. I expected there would be some unknown factor when dealing with twins- and that they may not be fully potty trained after 3 days. I decided to bite the bullet and go for it. I bought big kid wipes, lots of drinks, mini M&M's, fruit snacks and lollipops for rewards.

Day 1

We start the day in diapers and eat breakfast. The plan was to get underwear on, do circle time and some school activities. Little did I know that letting Ivey see her cool princess underwear would set off an epic meltdown. One pair of undies just would not do, she wanted ALLLLL of the underwear. Some how I convince her that she can only have one pair at a time (after 20 minutes of crazy crying) and we all move on with our lives. Everything went as expected, we went through 15 pair of underwear by lunch time and there was little success going on the potty (once for Ivey). By lunch Brooklyn had very little accidents and no success, which meant she was holding it. This became an issue because she WOULD not release on the potty and it had been about 3 hours. No amount of rewards or praise would get her to relax enough to go. She wanted to sit on the pot, but couldn't let it go. Eventually I tell her she can put a diaper on, but she is pretty much in the middle of a manic episode, running around, hitting things and screaming. I felt SO bad for her. Eventually she pees on the floor and I just let her.

I seriously contemplated giving up right then. But I knew that if I just pressed on and followed the method, that things would click for them by day 2 or 3. The girls took a 3-hour nap (hallelujah!). We decided that since they are still in cribs and moving into a big girl bed is not something we want to tackle ::ever:: they would wear diapers for sleeping. The afternoon went the same with accidents and no successes. Ivey wasn't having full-on accidents, just dampness which I take to mean that she doesn't have control over her bladder. On the other hand, Brooklyn has all the control, but would not allow herself to pee on the potty. This time she waited until she got into the bath to release.

Day 2

My resolve was high starting out the day. I kept telling myself that maybe my children would be those kids who things didn't click for until day 3 and I could handle that. It was pretty much a repeat of day 1. Ivey never told me she had to go to the bathroom, I had to catch her in the act every time and put her on the potty and she was still having damp undies. Brooklyn wanted to sit on her potty because she had to go and every time this happened Ivey would be out of sight and peed on herself. Brooklyn went hours without peeing, only to pee in her diaper at nap time and at bath time. She wasn't comfortable at all when the time would approach 2 hours and I tried running warm water, reading books to her, telling her she would get rewards. Nope, nothing, nada. I started getting concerned that it would give her a UTI or bladder infection. Anyhow, we made it through the day and put the girls to bed in diapers.

Time to relax....er think again. Brooklyn would NOT go to sleep. She screamed for 3 hours and Jason and I took turns trying to put her to sleep (he took more turns than I. Thank God for that man). We let her watch TV with us for a while and then tried to put her down again. She was screaming like she was being murdered and jumping so high in her bed that we thought she might catapult herself onto the floor. Seriously. At 10:00 we figure that she might be still holding her pee. Her diaper was pretty dry so we thought we would give her a bath and let her know it was ok to go. I guess it worked, because afterwards she went to sleep and we got to bed at 11.

At this point, my resolve is broken. It was breaking my heart to see Brooklyn in so much pain and needing to go to the bathroom and not being able to relax even in her diaper. Jason and I decided it was not worth going on and that maybe they just aren't ready to be potty trained. It really isn't a big deal to us to keep changing their diapers, even when the baby comes. I wanted to get the hard part of potty training out of the way before the baby comes, but I definitely don't want to scar my little girl for life in the process!

We decided that we will wait until 2-3 months after the baby arrives to give them time to adjust having this tiny human in the house before trying again. Hopefully they will be more ready at that point. If we want to go the quick route and do a 3 day method, we need to have man on man coverage so I will plan on having Jason there the whole time and possibly someone else. It may not have been a success, but I did love seeing their little butts in princess undies :)