This Friday, we go back in to see Katy’s urologist. We’ll repeat the same tests we did back at the end of last year and see if the Deflux operation has stopped the reflux back into Katy’s kidneys. Since last October, when Katy went more than 30 hours in between tinkles, we haven’t had another incident even close to that amount of time.
But, the larger issue at hand for us is attempting to potty train Katy. My Dad, Katy’s “Baba”, has led the charge on this front, and for a while it looked like we were really making progress. That is, until these last couple of weeks. Suddenly, and for no reason that we can fathom, Katy’s “times” – for lack of a better term – have completely changed. We had nearly a month where she would pee around 8 am in her potty chair and then she would pee and poop around 12:50 pm following lunch – all in her potty chair. I can’t even begin to tell you how excited we were and how excited she would be when it happened. But, now, we’re back to Katy waking up with a full diaper and sometimes a soaked bed. We’re back to irregular schedules with nothing to go on to help us.
- Katy multi-tasking on the potty. That’s her Yo Gabba Gabba Boom Box computer on her right and Muno in her hands.
And I’m back to thinking about the possibility of this never happening. See, the problem we face with Katy is that no one knows if she can feel when she’s supposed to go to the bathroom. Back at the end of last year, her doctors thought that the signal from her bladder to her brain saying, “I’m full! Empty me!” was getting lost in translation somewhere along the line. And you can see where that possibility would come up when your daughter’s bladder can hold over 3 liters of liquid. (Yes, that’s one and half big Coke bottles. The nurses at the children’s hospital had never seen anything like it.) Whether or not this is something that is being caused by her chromosome 6 deletion or something else, I don’t know if we’ll ever know.
We’ve read all the articles about potty training special needs kids. We know what we’re supposed to be doing. Even better, Katy actually thinks sitting on her potty chair is fun. But much of the time, even if she goes, she has no idea that it’s happened until she actually sees it in the container afterwards.
“Thank God” Katy has patient grandparents willing to keep working with her while Shel and I work during the day. And “Thank God” for the internet, because it’s the only place we can find size 7 diapers right now.
Suggestions are welcome!
Katy is so amazing! She’s overcome so much…this is a minor hiccup.
I have a friend who’s son has a number of kidney and bladder issues and had a dozen or more surgeries in the first two years of his life that he just can’t feel when he has to go. He never will, either. But, when they potty trained him, they used a timer. He’d have to try every 30 mins or so (and they lengthened the time once they learned the proper timing for his body). Eventually, he learned to follow that schedule without complaint (particularly when it became socially unacceptable to have accidents).
I don’t know if this’ll work for Katy, but it’s worth a try.
Thanks for the tip, Laura! I think that’s pretty much what we’re going to have to do.