More potty talk...

It has been quite a year. I started potty training Kayden a year ago. A whole year. And...wow. There have been MANY loads of laundry and many moments of frustration. She seemed to catch on really quickly but soon regressed with renos then a new baby throwing our routine out the window. And she never seemed to recover. By November we were well into a new routine but things just weren't getting better in terms of accidents. And I knew she was smart enough/old enough to catch on...something just didn't seem right. So I started looking into medical reasons for why potty training would be a struggle and wouldn't you know, constipation was the culprit! She's been plugged pretty much since starting solid foods and we noticed that when she was especially plugged, she had trouble holding her pee. But it never crossed my mind that constipation could be the reason she didn't feel her pee coming ALL the time! Ugh! I felt so bad. Here we had been trying to train her for almost a year and she was obviously trying but simply couldn't feel the urge to go! So we continued training but with extra motivation to solve her constipation issues as quickly as possible. Diet changes didn't seem to help much so I took her to the doctor in December. He suggested "Lax-a-Day." We tried it and it did help but when we stopped for a few days over Christmas, so did her pooping. I didn't feel good about a laxative being a permanent solution so I started looking at other things we could try. Two weeks ago we cut out dairy (switched to almond milk instead) and, without going into detail, I'll just say that it was a very good two weeks! Best two weeks she's had since she was exclusively breastfed! But almost none of that "good two weeks" made it into the potty, unfortunately, because for the first time that she could remember, she didn't have to sit and strain for half an hour to get it out...it just came! And took her by surprise...and didn't give her time to get to the potty. But talk about encouraging! Kayden, on the other hand, has seemed pretty discouraged with the whole potty training thing lately. And who could blame her? It's been a year of more accidents than successes. She recently just stopped telling us when she had accidents, wearing her wet pants until we noticed, and that's not cool. So yesterday I suggested that we take a break, go back to diapers, and when she turns 3 (10 days), she will be a big girl and can go back to panties and we'll try again with the whole staying dry thing. She seemed very grateful for the break. (She often tells me "I'm just having a break, Mama.") I'm a little nervous that she will lose what little bit she was trained...but I've also spent most of the past year feeling like success is "just around the corner" and it never was. So at this point I'm willing to take a small step back in hopes of a renewed girl when we start training again. It's been a long road. It's about as different from Levi's training as it could be (he was trained at 21 months within a few days, nights too by 22 months). This experience hasn't made me doubt that early potty training is wrong. I will still try to potty train Maddie before or around her second birthday. But I will make sure that there are no medical issues standing in her way of success. I kinda feel like I've failed Kayden. How could I have missed that for so long? I just hope that, once we have this constipation thing under control, potty training will be fast and easy and that it will build her confidence right back up again!