self-serve baby
when mairin was a wee infant she had a sleep issue: she would only sleep in my arms with her mouth attached to my breast. this worked for her a lot better than it worked for me, so i started reading about the various schools of sleep-training and waded my way through the cacophony of ideologues: do NOT let your baby cry herself to sleep, ever, or she’ll never learn to trust you. train yourself to let your baby cry it out or you’ll never get any rest and your child will grow up to manipulate you and everybody around her. buy a vibrating bouncy chair — it’s the only thing that will work. buy a swing — it’s the only thing that will work. always swaddle the hell out of your child to help her feel that secure, tucked-in feeling she had in the womb. never ever ever swaddle your child because it hampers development of the muscles in her arms.
and then i read the best advice ever: do what works. if you’re not happy, and your baby isn’t happy, then what you’re doing isn’t working and there’s no point forcing it. so i quit trying things and just started watching mairin. not only did we eventually figure things out (she liked to be swaddled, she loved the swing, and if she fell asleep nursing she needed to be left alone for a full sleep cycle — and then, when she entered deep sleep the SECOND time (NEVER the first), shannon could take her from me and put her to bed)), soon mairin was sleeping through the night. all on her own.
still, when her nursing times started to naturally reduce i started reading all about weaning and how to do it. but i caught myself early in the crazy-making process and realized i could just follow her cues and all would be well. and it was: by 10 months she was nursing once at night and once in the morning; by 11 months she wanted only her morning nursing-snuggle time; and by her first birthday, when she woke up eager to test her newfound legs by tearing around the house, she was done nursing entirely. all on her own.
so i decided with potty training just to let, well, nature take its course. i bought her a potty several months ago and put it in the bathroom so she could get used to its presence, but i only talked about it with her when she brought it up. usually those conversations went something like this:
me: mairin, where’s your juice?
mairin: scheuzz! scheuzz!
me: that’s right, honey. can you show mama where your juice is?
mairin, pointing at the toilet as if i were an imbecile: SCHEUZZ! SCHEUZZ!
me, lifting the little bowl out of the seat to see the (apparently designed as storage) space underneath it: oh! THERE’s your juice. you put your cup of juice in the potty!
mairin, grinning: scheuzz! scheuzz!
occasionally she would also sit on her potty, fully clothed, reading her books. but other than the potty serving as a reading seat or a cubby-hole, it hasn’t had much purpose.
i’ve been wondering whether i should push this. it would be nice not to have two kids in diapers at once. i also figure that if m gets potty-trained before gus arrives, she’ll just revert anyway — so what’s the point? and i kind of am drawn to mr. springfield’s philosophy of letting them run naked for a week during the summer and using that time to potty train them — sounds like prime tanning opportunity to me. but truth be told, i haven’t really done anything about my wonderings other than to wonder whether my indecisiveness is yet another sign of my terrible mothering skills.
then, last night, this:
mairin wanders into the kitchen, finds me, points to her diaper, and says: puuuuh, puuuuh.
me: hey, sweetie. do you need to go potty?
mairin, pointing at her diaper: puuuuh, puuuh.
me, leaning over to take a peak: well, let me check.
mairin: NO! then, pointing to her booster chair: puuuuh, puuuuh.
me: do you need to sit on the potty?
mairin: yes. (truly. she has quit saying “yieeah” and started in with a very grown-up sounding “yes”.)
me: okay, then, let’s go upstairs to the bathroom.
mairin: NO! then, pointing to her booster chair: puuuh, puuuh.
me, slow on the uptake as always: you, um, want to sit in your booster chair to go potty?
mairin, glad her idiotic mother is finally getting it: yes.
me: well, uh, hmmm, you see, you can’t go potty in your booster chair. (mairin starts to cry.) let’s go upstairs and use the potty, okay honey?
mairin: NO! NO! NO!
me, limply: okay.
so shannon stands by watching while i unstrap the booster seat from its grown-up chair and put it on the floor. delighted, mairin starts to pull off her diaper. suddenly entertaining visions of a mess i do not want to clean up, i snap out of it.
me: mairin, honey, let’s take this upstairs.
mairin, pointing at her booster seat: puuuh, puuuh.
so i pick up mairin and the booster and try not to look at shannon because i KNOW the look he’ll be giving me, and i trudge upstairs to the bathroom where i set down first the booster and then mairin. mairin tugs off her diaper and sits happily on the booster. i am still half-convinced something might happen and i won’t like it, so i try to persuade her to move herself to the potty seat. for her part, she knows all too well that she’s got me where she wants me and so she sits, quite happily, in her booster. where, as it happens, nothing happens.
so i figure — well, maybe she’s a little confused by the plethora of kiddie-sized seats and maybe she’s just having a bit of fun with her old mom and this was probably a one-off experience, y’know?
but then this morning mairin walks into the bathroom, tugs her diaper off, and sits on the potty. nothing happens, of course, but clearly the kid knows what she’s doing.
when i dropped her off at school i asked misses katherine and raven whether they were working on potty training. they looked at me a little sheepishly and said no, but they could if i wanted them to. i told them what had happened, and they told me that mairin had done the same thing at school on monday, and that she sat on the potty for the longest time, looking for all the world like queen victoria.
could it be that this kid will sleep-train herself, wean herself, and potty train herself? could she really be that easy? and if she is, what sort of karmic retribution will visit poor, clueless me when mairin hits her teenage years and i need to have an inkling about how to make her do what i want?
