The P Chronicles – Our History

Friday, August 31, 2012

As I said in the last post, let’s start with a bit of history. Avery took over a year to potty train. We started around age two, then we backed off thinking she just wasn’t ready. When we returned to the effort, the first two days were perfect. Then everything went downhill. She could use the potty one minute then be soaking wet 5 minutes later. I was constantly having to clean her car seat. The worst part is that she acted as if she didn’t notice. We really just thought she didn’t care. We went through reward systems with charts, then with treats. Then we started taking toys away when she was wet. Nothing worked. For reasons we do not know, around springtime things changed, and Avery started succeeding. We poured out the encouragement. On her four year birthday, Avery declared that four year olds do not wear pull-ups at night. We backed her fully despite the fact that she had rarely ever had a dry pull-up at night. She had some accidents, but for the most part she did really well as long as we woke her up to go one more time before we went to bed.

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(The good ol’ diaper days. – Photo by Brooke Davis)

Fast forward to two and a half weeks ago when Avery started pre-k. The first half week was fine. Then the next week, she came home wet every day. I know what you are thinking, she is just having a set back because of the stress of starting a new school. At first I thought the same thing, but she started wetting at home during the day and even at night. In search for some answers, Todd found this article that sounded somewhat similar to our situation. We changed our reactions to the situation and encouraged her any way we could including getting in touch with her teacher.

Within a few days, I was reading the book referenced in the article, It’s No Accident by Steve J. Hodges, MD. There are a few posts here to get a glimpse of what the book is about. Here is an excerpt from an article over on Slate,

“Accidents and bed-wetting have the same root cause: chronically holding poop or pee or both. A rectal poop mass squishes the bladder and messes with its nerves; holding pee thickens the bladder wall, shrinking the bladder’s capacity to hold urine and triggering hiccuplike contractions. The upshot: wet undies and bed sheets.”

I must say I warned you about the whole poop thing. Before we dive in head first to these issues, we have started conversations (again) with our doctor regarding the problems we have been dealing with. Our first step has been testing for a UTI (initial results are negative), and some dietary changes. If you are wondering how we could miss something like constipation, you would be surprised by all of the various forms the symptoms can take. Avery certainly poops every day (multiple times), but it is the consistency that can matter most. I’m eager to get into more details on some of these subjects, but this post is long enough already.  Bet you can’t wait for more!

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