Toileting and Sleeping: A New Addition To The Family

Cyber friends,

It has been a while since I have written an entry. In the past few months I have had a baby, started work, and been enrolling in Psychology PHd Programs! The most exciting developments this past few weeks has been Sabrina's sleep and Jackie's toileting. Let's start with our familiar friend, Jackie!

A very exciting and recent development is that Jackie has requested no more diapers at night. Jackie turned 2.5 years/30 months old last week. I wasn't sure when we'd transition her out of a crib or out of diapers, but we knew we would have them happen at the same time. I wasn't rushing it because I had no idea how the changes of the new baby in her life would impact her current functioning, and did not want to rush her into night independence. I also expected a bit of regression when Sabrina was born, as I had no idea how Jackie would be affected by a new little person sharing her parents' attention and I was for one was expecting the worst. Jackie has been day trained for a quite a while, only wearing underwear during the day (avoiding accidents, urinating and pooping successfully in the potty, and initiating). However, she always wore a diaper at night. It is true that it wasn't unusual for her to wake up with a dry diaper, but as a parent I was scared to make the transition from ease of diaper use to potential accidents, etc. Thus, we have been putting diapers on her at night. Until 3 days ago, when we looked in the cabinet and saw the diaper box was empty. It was the gynormous Cotsco box full of diapers and I remember telling my husband when buying it that I wished it would be the last box we ever had to buy for her. Well, I was right. We were forced the first night to have her go to bed without a diaper, because we were fresh out. However, when she woke up in the morning dry she told me she didn't want to wear diapers anymore. She wanted to wear underwear to bed. This is night 3 of not wearing diapers. She has woken up dry so far, so this is totally successful as of right now. Of course, we do have some simple strategies in place to promote her success. She is in a toddler bed (aka big girl bed) now, with her door ajar, so she can walk to the bathroom independently if she needs to go in the middle of the night. We do give her the motivation of a small cookie, which she never gets and absolutely loves, if she wakes up dry in the same underwear she went to bed in! (I actually just got her up to use the bathroom and that's all she talked about when she was sitting on the potty. I didn't even have to remind her.So, it's all very new and very reinforcing to her thus far). We have her in a night gown so she doesn't have to worry about fumbling to pull up or down pants when she's half asleep. We also stop liquids after 6pm, and wake her up before we go to bed to take her to the bathroom.  Mostly, though, and I am not biased at all, she is just an amazing young lady.


Now let's move onto the beautiful new love of my life--Sabrina Belle. I have not written about her yet, but I had a beautiful baby girl 10 weeks ago. It was definitely not easy at first. I had some time adjusting to juggling the responsibilities and needs of two children. Jackie has been very helpful with her baby sister, fetching clothes or burp cloths, etc., but the lack of sleep at night made watching both energetic girls all day especially hard. Sabrina was getting up every 2 hours and playing at night, and I was very, very, very tired. Did I mention I was tired? This pregnancy was very hard on me physically, so it took me longer to heal. The lack of sleep was not helping my pain or my healing. After the third week I realized that I had to start using my career training to make my life easier. I spent the remainder of my 8 week maternity leave starting and maintaining Sabrina on a sleep schedule! Operation: "Mommy really needs to function like a normal human being." Sabrina Belle is now 10 weeks old and instead of going to bed at midnight and getting up to eat every 2 hours, she is going to bed at 8pm and sleeping continuously through until 7am. She is 10 lbs, so the weight gain has definitely contributed to her ability to sleep through the night. However she is much smaller in weight than Jackie was when Jackie started sleeping all night long, so I think the strategies we used were definitely helpful as well. It is times likes these where I am especially thankful for my career and my training in behavior modification. I am now back to work and so happy that night-waking has stopped, so I can wake up rested and ready to start the day! I will write more tomorrow about the strategies I used to change her sleeping habits, but wanted to share my little miracle with this blog. She is a very happy and calm little baby and we are blessed to have her. This also means double the parenting dilemmas and double the fun, as I now raise not one but two children from a behavior analyst's perspective.

Colleen Williams, M.Ed, BCBA