Miralax

There were times it seemed it might never happen, but I can say with confidence that Eliza is 99.9% potty trained.

She is successfully getting all her waste in the appropriate places, whether we’re home or away. She uses training potties, public toilets or other people’s bathrooms. I still have her on Miralax and will continue to give her the “magic” dose for her – 3/4 teaspoon – until I run out of it.

I think because we stuck with it she has done well. It was really hard to deal with a month of poopy pants and there were many occasions when I wanted to throw in the towel. I think she made the decision easy because it wasn’t that she wanted to poop in her diaper, but rather that she didn’t want to poop at all once she figured out she could control it. However, the Miralax did its job eventually. I am still weaning her off of expecting chocolate and a Dora sticker every time she has a BM, but I think that is in the near future.

I carry around a foldable Disney princess potty seat and she seems to like using it. (I wipe it down with an antibacterial wipe after each use.) She uses a padded Elmo seat on the regular toilets at home. And sometimes she likes to use her training potties, especially when she just has to pee because she can do the entire process all by herself.

Every once in a while (such as in the car on the way to the beach when she woke from a bad dream) she has an accident. But they are few and far between. I spoke to a mom at a birthday party yesterday who said it took a year to potty train her daughter. So I’m really glad that it didn’t come to that. That really would feel like forever.

We started Eliza on Miralax twelve days ago to fix her “backup” issue that kept her from wanting to poop on the potty. She did much better for the first two days, but the half a capful (which is about a half tablespoon) was too much and caused her to have the opposite problem. It has been difficult to find the right dosage, but it seems that half a teaspoon is the right amount. She still, however, does a poopy dance, is reluctant to get on the toilet, and has little accidents, even though once she goes in the potty she is uber excited. We are just going to keep working at it and keep giving her chocolate every time she gets it right. The pediatrician says we should use the Miralax for a good month after she starts doing all her business consistently in the right place. I guess that makes sense, because we don’t want to mess up the progress we’ve made. It’s been interesting to say the least, but we are taking baby steps in the right direction. Our “Toilet Training in Less Than a Day” has become “Pee Pee Training in Three Days and Never Ending Poop Training.” The book is definitely deficient in explaining what to do about #2.

The final installment: Fully potty trained and loving it

The Miralax is sort of working: another potty training update