Potty training sounded so intimidating for me. I have no idea how it’s going to turn out and whether I could handle it.

I knew she was capable of being potty trained months ago, but I wasn’t ready for it. I mean, it’s going to be a HARD WORK.  I put it up a long time ..until I realized the second one is arriving soon, and I don’t think I can handle potty training AND breastfeeding a baby. It just sounds like way too exhausting.

So I asked the nursery and happy to find out that they are willing to work with you, yay! Unfortunately, I have no clear understanding on HOW to do it. There are so many questions such as night time and day care. I know it’s going to be hardwork, but what if drama comes into the picture, and how do I troubleshoot it without regressing the potty training process? I know, I know, it sounds like I’m thinking too much, but to me, if I were to spend 3-4 days doing the hard, exhausting work, I might as well go all out. No problems are going to make me give up and try another time, it’s just going to be just as stressful for my daughter and me. Plus, the last thing I want is to make the process longer and tougher.

So, in search for answers, I did google around and found so many different methods to potty train. I could use treats and rewards system, or I could bring the child to the toilet every hour.

Then, I found a PT book  “Oh, Crap! Potty training!” By Jamie Glowacki and I found her method resonates to me the most. Her book made me convince to start potty training ASAP. She covered the HOW-TOs, nighttime, poop, daycare, problems along the way and the troubleshooting. Honestly, I would have trained Sara months ago if I had found the book earlier, instead of waiting to be very very pregnant AND huge.

So, how did I do it? 

For training purposes, I gave her extra fluids to drink. She gets free pass for unlimited supply of Milo, Yakult and Solivite. and I also made watermelon juice.

For now I’m only doing the daytime training although, training day and night is the best. Her naptime and bedtime trainng will be delayed until the new baby arrives when I have to get up to nurse the baby. For now, mama needs to rest for labour and get as much night time sleep as much as I can, while I can!

Now, first of all for a potty training to be successful the PARENTS have to be ready for it. If your child is 20months old, they are definitely capable. Second, don’t expect the child to be able to tell before peeing. It is something new for them to learn. They have ‘forgotten’ or unaware of the sensation of their bodily functions since they have been diapered since born. Seriously, just don’t bank on it. It is our job to learn their pee signals. With time, accidents and practice, they will be able to tell and hold longer.

Day One – Block One

We started with block one. (Blocks are just learning stages, doesn’t translate to days. One block may take anywhere from 1-3 days depending on child).

We started the day by telling her that she’s no longer wearing diapers. when I took off her diaper, she cried so hard, saying she wants to keep her diaper on. Which is funny, because most of the times we struggle to dress her up because she refuse to wear her diaper!

Dearest Sara,

I hope this email finds you in good health. Today is 4th of December 2015. You are now about 2 years, 1 month and 3 days. I am now about 8 months pregnant with your sister.

As of now your father is not around, and is on business trip for 3 days, leaving you and I alone at home.

Last night you were not in your best behaviour, and I don’t blame you. Your cognitive development is still young and developing and this means you are unable to manage your emotions, you are lacking understanding of your own experiences and senses. I know that you’ve been missing me for the day and you need my love. On top of that, you are also missing your father whom you haven’t seen in more than 24 hours.

However, last night, I was really tired. Being heavily pregnant makes me get tired easily, and lifting all the heavy grocery, carrying my handbag and your nursery bag and you – all at once made me very tired. You were lovely when we had our quick grocery trip -helping me load the shopping basket and pulling the basket behind me. At home, after dinner, when I wanted to grab the the clothes at the backyard, you wanted to follow me. I knew you didn’t want to be left alone in the house, so I let you follow me but I asked you not to touch the cats. The cats gave you rashes and HMD. So the last thing I want is you getting any more rashes.

You obeyed my instructions, but the cats made it hard for you to reach out. You tried to shoo the cats away but in the process you were close to touching the cats and I had to intervene with little energy I had. I know your intention was to follow my instructions but the cats really got to my nerves. It was my protective instincts. As we went back into the house, you didn’t want to go in. You wanted to keep wearing your favourite shoes that Abah bought for you.

At that time I was already burnt out. It was 9pm, I was sticky and sweaty. I needed a shower -RIGHT NOW. On top of that, you had pooped in your diaper – and to me that calls for an immediate action. I didn’t have the energy to respectfully talk to you out of it. I lost it, and I demanded you to come in. My reaction has caused you to rebel and even worse, I forcefully carried you into the house, took your shoes off -and all hell break loose.

You were screaming on top of your lungs. I was at the edge of insanity. I picked up your nursery bag, my handbag and you your threw your bottles to express your anger. I was really mad and frustrated, but I know it’s not your fault. and in actuality I wasn’t even mad at you. I had to release my anger somewhere, I kicked your crocodile softbook that you were playing with earlier. I too, was throwing a tantrum. Unfortunately you saw that and you it made you frustrated, you picked up your softbook and asked me not to kick it.

Sara, at that point of time I really have lost it. In anger, I asked you to come with me upstairs but you refused. So I said, (yelled) “Up to you! Mama is going upstairs!” I went up, with all the bags and the fresh laundry. You cried even more, on the top of your lungs, crying for mama, “Mama! Mama!” My heart broke. Panting, I carried you upstairs and I undressed you to clean you up. I even gave you a quick shower. After toweling you dry, I distanced myself from you, just to take a moment. I texted Abah my ranting to let off some steam.

You are a smart girl. You found your diaper on your own, put it own, and you even put on your own chosen pants and onesie. It’s not your pyjamas, but as long as you get dressed, I didn’t mind. Then, I went to shower. I took my time, to gain back my control. The cool shower washed away the sweat and anger. I felt refreshed and regained composure. Then, I went out of shower to find that you are building a tall tower with your Megablock.

However, you still weren’t so happy. In fact, you asked me to go back into the shower, which meant you needed some space, too.

Abah called, and talked to you for a while. Once abah’s voice dissapeared, you cried again. Now I’m convinced that you are missing abah. I gave you your favourite treat, Pepero while I performed isya’ prayer. After that your mood slowly improved as I regained my composure. Perhaps the fact that you were able to sense my stress and disappointment made you upset too.

Sara,I always try to be gentle and respectful parent because I believe that will be best for your emotional development. However, sometimes I do slip and loose control. For one moment of lost control, it makes me worried for days – fear of being counter productive of all the work put into nurturing you. Fear of jeopardizing your emotional development and ultimately – the kind of relationship that we are shaping for each other. I also fear of damaging your trust that we’ve built since you were born.

I know that all you really need at this age is unconditional love – it’s the most important thing at this tender age to build trust, independence and healthy emotional development.

I will continue to improve myself. I will learn not to let the worst of me get to me. It wasn’t you, and I had no excuse to show my anger at you. You are kid -and throwing tantrums is what kids do -not adults. My only hope is that you forgive me and this won’t cause a dent in our precious relationship and trust we’ve built.

p.s, We created an email account for our daughter – it’s like a time capsule.

Last weekend I’ve started the gentle birthing class with AMANI. Our chosen educator is Diana Shuwardi, from Shah Alam. It was only the first 2 sessions, yet I’ve already learned so much, that it made me feel as if I am a first time mom.

We attended antenatal class at the hospital with our first, but this birthing class is so much detailed. Since it is personal class, I had the opportunity to ask questions until I am satisfied with the answer and truly understand the topic.

Birth ‘Training’

Among important things that I’ve learned, is birthing is like a marathon. It’s going to be painful but with rewarding ending. Do you join a marathon and not train for it? Of course not! That will be like booking a torture session for yourself! So, in order to do well in the marathon and be glorious at it, you will have to train for it. And that includes being physically and mentally ready for the marathon. You will need all the stamina, endurance and to endure through labour while still remain calm.

Starting now, my everyday routine will include ‘training’ in preparation of birth.

1. Exercise 3-4 times a week such as yoga or swimming.
2. Daily breathing practice and pregnancy exercise (squatting, the butterfly, pelvis tilt, etc)
3. Balanced nutrition as taught in class.
4. Positive birth affirmations for mental preparation. Practice labour positions.
5. Most importantly, prayers and Qur’an recitations.

Birthing Partner Role

The class is also teaching my husband to learn what are his roles during labour. I was surprised to find out his feelings. He said he felt helpless during labour. To me, during our first labour, I was grateful to have him by myself. Somehow I feel like the class is giving us the opportunity to share and speak up about our opinions during labour since both of us are being educated about it. So it is good that I also get to know about his opinion on a particular matter, it makes me feel that he is more involved. He is getting to his role as an important birhting partner rather than just a husband on companion duty (haha).

Now, having learned his duty, I realized there are so many ways a birthing partner can support and help me to go through labour. We are going to make a photocopy of his roles at different stages of labour and paste them on the walls in the room to so that we can read it everyday.

Birth Plan

What I like about the class, is making the birth plan. I had a birth plan for my first labour but some of it didn’t go quite as planned because my husband didn’t know what it meant. So, by making the birth plan together, he is going to be aware of it, and will be the enforcer and my representative for the times I won’t able to.

Understanding how to work with your body
Birthing is a natural processs. Your body knows how to give birth and your baby knows how to birthed. It is the mother who is clouded by fear, anxiety and lack of knowledge that’s interfering with the birthing process, that can result in poor progress, fetal distress and so on. So, what should we do?

Keep active, practice the positions to help labour process and relax.

All in all, I am so glad to attend the class. Labour should be a wonderful and joyous experience as it is a celebration to welcome a new baby into the world! It has made me look forward to my labour instead of fearing or being nervous about it. The only thing though, I just need to do all my ‘training’ in such a short time! InshaAllah, as long as I do it with discipline, it will be worth it.

Sara is 2 years old. 2 years and 19 days to be exact. She’s a well behaved girl with usual cheekiness and curiosity but never a “problematic” one.

A week ago, after our quick gateaway to Pangkor, she caught high fever. The fever went up to 40.3C, Alhamdulillah, she didn’t get febrile fit. Her doctor said she’s older now so her threshold is much higher.

Now, upon recovering, she had been really fussy. Sure, I understand, she’s probably feeling fatigue and still sore from the fever, so we put up with her fussiness and tried to be as gentle as possible.  The thing is her fussiness came with aggressive behavior. She started hitting and kicking both of us. Whenever we try to calm her down, she would hit us even more and cry to leave her alone. I tried telling her gently that hitting hurts mama and abah, but it seemed she chose to ignore it. The best bet we had was to distract her attention by reading her some books.

Being the mother, I knew something is not right, something is bothering her because she is usually gentle. Plus, we don’t believe in hitting.

So I offered her favorite teether several times a day and sometimes she took it. Okay, she has 4 teeth coming out all at the same time, so that’s probably it. We went her grandma’s house so that my mom could give her a massage. My mom said she is having a lot of wind everywhere in her body.

After that, her mood improved significantly, but not entirely.

She was still aggressive whenever she was fussing. If something is not right, she started hitting us. My husband has started to lose his patience but I told him we need to remain gentle until we find out what’s going on with her. I reminded him that this is not her usual behavior so we need to be careful on how we handle it because the last thing we want, is to make it worse.

It baffled us. So I asked around, and everybody around me said it’s because she’s going to get a sibling. While I don’t deny that, I don’t think she fully comprehend what it means to get a sibling. So to say something like that for a 2-year-old is quite simplistic thinking.

There must be deeper, underlying cause.

So, I looked up to google to see what the experts are saying. I was all ready to find a children phycologist to fix the problem. From my finding, it turns out toddlers her age want more independence and power, yet they are limited by their vocabs and capability.

I wanted to test this to see if it’s true.

Yesterday, I was very careful not to force doing her anything that she doesn’t want. I tried to respect her wishes and let her do whatever she wants.  She threw foods around for fun, instead of nagging at her, we showed her how to clean up the mess. She helped a bit and then moved on (something we need to work on). She insisted to watch ipad, I let her watch one song and then we negotiate for other entertainment. Then, she didn’t want to get out of the car, because she is tired and she wants to sleep in her car seat. So, we said we’ll give her a treat (Garret popcorn to be exact, lol) if she’s willing to sleep on the bed.

Guess what?

It worked! She stopped being aggressive altogether! She did fuss a little for milk in the middle of the night, but that’s it. No hitting, no aggressive behavior. She went to bed with no problem, and woke up in a fairly good mood. Alhamdulillah.

Let’s recap how we handled agressive behaviour. 

1. Respond gently. Tell her hitting hurts and it’s not okay. Always remain calm, and if she vocal, ask her what she wants by guessing a few things. She may point or stop crying when you guessed something right. Don’t try to ask a toddler what they want when they are mad, they wouldn’t know how to answer.

2. Be more observant and attentive to her behaviour.  Try to think of any triggers. Is there any changes in her life or daily routine recently? or;

3. Consider where could she have learned such behaviour (daycare, tv shows, etc) and if possible, fix it.

4. Once I think I might know the underlying cause, work towards it.

Parenting is a path of a crazy roller coaster ride. Once we figured things out and everything is okay, things just flip and turn around and leave you hanging again. It is just all the transitions and phases of a child, on top of us trying to keep things together. The key is, like my husband like to remind me, to always celebrate the small victories and worry tomorrow’s problem, tomorrow. At the end of the day, we need to cherish the moment, because our children is not going to be little for long. Sara is a living proof, she is 2 years now and I barely felt the 2 years gone by.

Sara wanted to wear baju kurung instead of her pyjmas. Ok darling, as long as you are not naked.