Potty Training - A Long Long Story

We had a hard time with potty training. Gracie refuse to use a potty. From the time that she can walk, she does her business standing up. She has developed a funny hand clapping ritual too. When she is ready to start, she will wave her palms to warn us away. Nobody is allowed near her at all. Or even to look at her. She will scream her protests. Her favourite position is at the foot of our bed. She would go through this pattern of patting the bed with both hands, then clapping her hands. After that, she would clasp her hands together and strain for a while before repeating the whole pattern. Initially, we were very concerned as she is a very picky eater, refusing vegetable and diet supplements. So constipation is common. A few times, we had to bring her to the hospital as she had struggled to pass motion for a few hours. It tored at my heart to see her screaming as the nurse inserts a suppository. My wife has the uneviable task of inserting the suppository at home a few times. Gracie is now terrified of all doctors and nurses, also partly due to the vacination injections she had received. She is also wary of being near my wife when she pass motion. So the task of cleaning up often falls on me. For a 10 kg child, she is very strong when she is terrified. It is a very dramatic affair. She would be sobbing and screaming the whole time. Not easy to clean up the poop when she is all tense up and refuses to bend over. Another of my tasks is to comfort her after that, as she will not let anybody else hold her. So I would hold her in a hug and walked around till she fell asleep.

My wife and I often spoke about filming the whole affair to show Gracie after she grows up. We thought we will have a good laugh about it. We never did film the whole episode, it is just too painful to watch her suffer through it. Prune juice seems to be the best remedy so far. So it is a daily affair to try to get her to drink some. Things are better now. I guess we will have a laugh about this when she grows older. For now, we are still trying to do potty training!