Imagine potty training for 7 years

 I hate potty training. It's messy, it's time consuming, it's frustrating and it's never immediate. You get messes on your bathroom floor, or worse your carpet, you have extra laundry and extra stinky laundry. It wears on  your patience and you know losing your patience will only make matters worse. You always have to pack an extra pair of clothes anywhere you go and ideally if you are potty training you should be home all the time for a given amount of time (each child is different). You make progress and then sometimes go backwards. A diaper can be such an easier way to live for a while. No rush to the bathroom, rarely accidents on the clothes, less laundry to do and hopefully no poop or pee on your floor.

So I usually wait to potty train. If my child acts interested we will go to the potty and we will do several trial potty training sessions from 1 day to a week depending on the child's interest but I always wait until my child seems motivated to potty train. My daughter is 3 and just this week decided it truly is important to potty train. She has been interested since she was 18 months or younger but it wasn't always consistent and she wasn't very successful. I am not good at the constant reminders or setting an alarm and if I do set an alarm I usually miss the window of when the child actually  needs to go. This is my fourth child and I realized I'm just not a good potty training mom. So I wait, I wait until my child is pretty much able to potty train him or herself. Sometimes I feel guilty as I hear other mothers talk about how they are potty training their child that is younger than mine. Sometimes I worry I made the wrong decision not pushing potty training more as I see their 2 year old being successful taking care of their own toileting needs but then the  day finally comes when my child is ready to figure this out by him or herself and I realize all is well. It worked out fine.

Now imagine all of the struggles you have found with potty training and imagine...you have done it for 7 years. The messes, the trial and error, the extra laundry, the stinky smells, the feeling that you are failing, the impatience at your child for not being able to succeed and the guilt for feeling that way. Then imagine...it will NEVER go away. There is no hope for a different lifestyle only maybe an improved lifestyle but still it will always feel like a little bit of potty training. That's part of what it's like to have a child with spina bifida. You ache for their frustration and you want to scream for yours.

There are times I feel selfish as a mother, because I am not wishing the spina bifida will go away for him, I am wishing it for me. Wishing he could independently go number 2 and I would never have to know about it. Wishing there was less laundry and that his bed didn't smell like urine from leaking out at night. Wishing I wasn't cleaning up poop stains, wishing I didn't wake up to do a cone enema first thing in the morning. Wishing we weren't fighting about catheterizing or diaper changes. Wishing life were simpler and pooping and peeing were easier. Wishing for the days when I took bowel and bladder control for granted.

The supplies gathered for a typical trip to the bathroom for him

Amongst the mess and the trial and error, we are able to bond. The time needed to care for his toileting needs is time that we have to set aside. So we make the best of it. We talk about what he wants to do for the day or how his day was. I ask him about his dreams last night and tell him about mine. I wish we were doing something different, I wish he didn't need this special care and that life was easier for him but at least it gives us something many families struggle to find and that is TIME.