I am posting today as a very happy lady, but the last few weeks have been tough. A few weeks ago, we decided it was time to make the giant leap to big girl panties. So, we picked a weekend to start so that we could stay home and work really intensely on potty training. David went to the store and picked Rose out some super cute princess panties and we spent the weekend cheering like maniacs over all her successes and being totally neutral to all of her accidents. She seemed happy and almost empowered by her achievements, but I could tell the stress was getting to her some. By mid-week she had starting having BHS daily and by week's end she was back to 3-4 times a day. We went back to our old ways of sheltering her a lot and getting her to bed super early. I even gave her the pacifier back for a few weeks. We were just doing everything to keep our stress levels down. I hate putting this in a blog, but I know the truth is helpful...I started even having chest pains daily from dealing with the stress of it. But, we persisted with potty training, against the urgings of some family members to back off for a while. All I can say, is I just knew it was the right thing for her.
For a while there, every trip to the potty seemed like we were running the gauntlet. As I plastered on my happy face and announced it was potty time, I would brace myself for her reaction. Strangely though, 98% of the time her spells did not occur over going to the potty...they were triggered by other things but perpetuated by the stress she was under over the constant potty-ing.
The actual potty training part of all this was pretty easy, we're now going on our 3rd day with no accidents. The BHS that it caused was pretty bad, but we're also on about our 3rd day with no spells at all....she did turn a little blue this morning as I put her in the car...but I hardly even think of that as a spell anymore, now that I know what a bad one looks like. I think she's a little stressed over moving up to a new classroom at school. But, as always we will press on.
She's a beautiful sweet little girl with lots of wonderful qualities. I say that, only because I don't want anyone to think that she's a significantly difficult child emotionally...she's really a very typical 2 year old. She is a fairly quiet and relatively internalizing child, but nothing unusual. I thank heaven for that too, because I know somewhere out there someone else is dealing with severe BHS with a high stress child and I pray for them nightly :)
