The time had come to think about encouraging my son to perform his bodily functions in a place other than his nappy. Being a realist, I thought about the potential associated mess and debated about whether it was time to face up to my domestic responsibilities and compare home insurance, in case of irreparable carpet damage.

I’d been setting the scene for a while – I’d bought a Pourty before he was even one and kept it near to where I changed my son and occasionally sat him upon it, to get him vaguely used to the concept. Cub showed a strong interest interest last year, when he saw a girl use a potty. It lasted a few days, but the potty use was not consistent – I encouraged him to use a potty but he would really just go sporadically. A few months ago he seemed to want to use my toilet, so I bought one of those things thats sits on top of your loo seat to make it smaller but it slipped one day when he was sat upon it, and put him off again for a while. When spring time came around once again, and he began to show an interest in the toilet again, I stuck Thomas stickers on his pourty and let him romp around bottomless but this only really resulted in more puddles than potties, and one rather unfortunate incident involving a large brown mess and his toothbrush. He did manage to go one full day in pants, but his Dry Like Me’s that I had bought as an alternative to pullups did feel a bit wet at the end of the day.

Again he seemed to want to use my loo, and around May time I found this rather nifty contraption. It’s a 3 in one potty and although initially he enjoyed using it on the actual loo, we now use it as a low-seater. At the same time, I saw Elmos Potty Training DVD on sale in Adsa for £3, so I snapped that up, and after looking around for a potty-related book that we could read together, settled on Pirate Pete’s Potty.

Over the last few months I have let him wander round the house with nothing on his bum, particularly if we were spending lots of time in the garden. I believe that this gave him an awareness of the bodily processes and though I have had to clean up mess, he realised he had done it and came to fetch me to clean it up. After a couple of poos in the garden, he would come to me and ask for a poo bag so that he could clean it up himself. If we were upstairs, he would use his deluxe potty but downstairs he would often puddle in the garden.

Sometimes I would ask him ‘do you want a nappy today or your big boy pants?’ and he would choose nappy, until one day, out of the blue, just over two weeks ago, he opted for big boy pants, and the same the next day, and we have progressed from there to full potty training in a day. For the first week I kept Dry Like Me’s in his pants but unless we’re going on a long trip I have not bothered this week. At the beginning, he would sometimes take himself off to the potty and forget to pull his pants and trousers down – an easy error, I think. A few times I’ve asked him ‘can you come to the loo with me’ just to remind him that he might need to go. One time he pooped in his pants but managed to remove them, flush the poo and even wipe his own bum (messily) ! Pulling things up and down is another hard step to negotiate but after two weeks he is doing this himself now too.

Nights have been dry for a very long time now anyway, so we are now completely nappy-free. I am so proud of my clever little boy, so I thought that I’d share some of the things that I found helpful in our quite spectacular (at only two and a half) baby milestone.

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