Holiday from EC

For some reason, for the past fortnight the girl has regressed in her toilet habits to where she was 6 months ago. A month ago she was wetting maybe 4 nappies a week – half of those in her sleep. Now she's going through that many in a day. She's no longer giving us any signals, and will deny that she has to go even when she actually does.

It's perfectly natural for an ECd baby to slip for a while. It's supposed to happen when they level up in other things, or when sick, or various other causes. She's done this before to a degree, but never so markedly.

The weird thing is she's really only missed at home. Well, she missed once at a friend's place and once at a pub yesterday, but for the most part, she's only missing at home. Admittedly she's home more often than she's out and about, but if she'd wet 4 nappies at home over the same period where she wet just one outside, clearly there's something there.

So I've had to regress along with her. Really watching her for any sign of change in behaviour, or interrupting whatever we're doing to take her too the loo. We've even stopped calling it the "loo" or "toilet" in favour of "bathroom" which is made up of sounds I know she can say – just in case she decides to tell us she has to go instead of her usual gesture.

Watching for subtle changes in her behaviour is hard. By the time it's clear that she's gone from normal play to uncomfortably-full-bladder mode, she's actually moved on to unhappy-pants mode, and it's too late. The problem is amplified by (my suspicion that) she's actively trying to hide the fact she needs to go. Today I asked her if she needed the loo (she was still dry). She babbled a bit and handed me a book, demanding I read it to her. Despite the abridgement where the little train could quite easily without much effort, she was freshly wet by the time I finished.

So I can only hope this phase ends soon enough and we get back to normal. In the meanwhile I just have to try hiding my disappointment and making her experience on the toilet as fun as possible, so she doesn't start making negative associations.