the long dark night of potty training

Indeed, the diaper rash is yeast! My ped has an interesting protocol. Lotri.min, of course, but then he also wants us to abstain from wipes and to use kleenex and baby oil at diaper changes. For three weeks! The goal is to keep her as dry as possible. He warned that even after symptoms are gone, the yeast may flare back up unless we go about three weeks being very careful the entire time to keep her dry.

What's interesting is how little I miss those wipes. The baby oil and kleenex thing sounds like it wouldn't work, but in fact, she's much cleaner than with the wipes, in some ways.

In other news, we've entered what a friend of mine calls the long dark night of potty training. W is wearing underwear over his diapers at all times (he LOVES his Thomas the Train undies!) and is sitting on the potty regularly. It's only pee so far, but I'll take it. At school, he's even better. No diapers at all--just underwear, though accidents have happened quite a few times, so I bought a bunch of cheap targ.et pants to keep around in case he doesn't make it to the potty on time.

This is where I am at the moment: knee deep in diaper rashes and potty training sticker charts. Other things are happening, of course. W turns three in a few days (wha?) and I'm in grading hell because it's the end of the semester. I'm also finally feeling healthy--I've had a string of headachy episodes and minor colds that are all but gone. It's a common end of semester thing for me. I almost always get sick or just physically unwell (you know, that feeling that something is off, even if you're not demonstrably sick). But it's clearing out. I'm feeling more like myself.

I also think that the last of the breastfeeding hormones have settled down. I find that the end of breastfeeding throws me for a real loop, and maybe that's what's been going on, too. I have no science about what kind of havoc weaning plays on a woman's body, but I bet it would be interesting. I suspect the answer would be that every woman is different and that the body adjusts in its own time, right?

Anyway, knee deep. I'll update on how it continues to go. I'm really posting this because I've been reading lots of other parents' protocols on potty training, and I'm always interested to see how it played out. Maybe someone will find my potty training attempts useful.

One last thought about potty training. My aim, in all of this, is to go at W's pace rather than my own. W is one of the last kids in his class to be working on potty training, and some of the kids younger than him (2.5-3) are already day potty trained. I just haven't pushed it because I wanted W to feel like it was his success, not mine. I think this is the right approach, though I'll have to reassess when we get farther along. My evidence so far is just that he's so freakin' proud of himself when he does pee on the potty or get stickers from his teacher for successfully telling her when he needs to go. That's what's telling me that we're on the right track.