Ashley’s Uterus and Charlotte’s Bladder

I think a title like the one I've given this post constitutes oversharing.

To answer your question: nope, no baby yet. This is a good thing. Sure, we may have preemptively rearranged our lives (and my mom’s), but we are now halfway through the week and on our way to reaching 37 weeks on Sunday, and you know what? I think we’ll make it.

After Sunday, this kiddo is free to come. In fact, I hope she does. After asking my mom to fly east early and tying up everything at work via turbo speed, I’m frankly going to feel sort of guilty if Lorelei camps out in my uterus for 3 more weeks.

Which is entirely possible.

The contractions have significantly reduced, which is weird and NOT following the Charlotte delivery pattern, but it bodes well for having a healthy, full-term little girl. Internally, I have no clue what’s going on, but I’ll know more after my doctor’s appointment tomorrow. If nothing has progressed, I think I owe my mom a dinner out. Or a plane ticket.

In other news, we’re on our second round of Trying Really Hard To Potty Train Charlotte. And yes, we ARE aware that potty regression is common when a new sibling arrives. We’re going for it anyway, while we’ve just got the one child. We gave it a whirl about a month ago, and it was a disaster. The girl was simply NOT ready, so we decided to postpone it. We feel like she got a long enough break from the potty-training routine to try again with a fresh start. It has been a LONG few days, and I’m doing as much laundry now as I did when Charlotte was a newborn, but we’re finally making significant progress.

Charlotte’s teachers are training her during the day alongside another little girl (potty training together has made them BFFs this week) and they encourage and congratulate each other, which I think is totally adorable. I’m so grateful to have the teachers’ help. They know what they’re doing, they’ve successfully potty-trained oodles of kids, and to my knowledge, they don’t feel like the worst parent ever when Charlotte has an accident.
Progress is incremental but moving forward. Charlotte had more accidents than I could count on Sunday, six on Monday, and three yesterday. We’ve also had what are, for us (yes, us—potty-training is a family-wide endeavor, believe you me), BIG victories. On Monday, Chris wanted Charlotte to stay in her undies for the loooooong drive home PLUS a stop to get gas and pick up some things at the grocery store! I was totally against this and wanted her in a diaper, and I let Chris know my opinion. But I quickly shut up, because I didn’t want Charlotte to witness (a) us disagreeing about her, or (b) Mommy doubting her stay-dry ability. We kept her in undies.

She happily sat on the classroom toilet before we left, didn’t piddle a bit, and we left school full of pessimism (at least I did). The whole drive to store, I kept reiterating that we DON’T want to pee in our undies. By the time we got to the store 30 minutes later, she was still dry—I could not believe it. Over the weekend, and in general, the child can’t go 3 minutes without a trickle. Chris took her to the restroom in the store, and again, she didn’t go. However, she made it through the entire store trip PLUS the drive home dry! When we got home, she shouted, “I go on the toilet!” and bolted for the bathroom. And lo and behold, that girl went precisely where she was supposed to. And she was SO proud of herself. We made a huge deal out of the fact that she stayed dry and THEN went in the toilet, and I think some dots were connected for her a little bit. Maybe. She put those undies back on and stayed dry all through dinner.

Tuesday, Charlotte went at school before getting in the car and made it home dry again (it’s a long drive, so it’s a big deal). Again, she stayed dry all through her dinner.

For us, these are huge steps forward that were unthinkable before now. We have soooooooo long to go before we’re even within the ballpark of having this child potty-trained, but we’re optimistic that she’s starting to get it. The fact that she’s able to HOLD IT a little bit is amazing to us.

With Mums here now, we have and extra set of hands to help with Charlotte—an extra set of capable hands, as Chris aptly put it. Hopefully, that will help with the consistency potty training demands.

So, here we are. Mums is telecommuting from our home office until D-Day, and Chris, Charlotte, and I are continuing to go to work (or school) until this baby girl comes.

Full. Term