Saying Goodbye to Diapers and Baby Bottles

The  months leading up to my son turning 3 are happy ones. I have purchased the last box of diapers for him. I know it’s the last purchase I’ll need because he’s managed to control his bladder — staying dry in his underpants during the day and overnight for weeks now.

Diapers

Why I bother to purchase another box of diapers even though he’s shown weeks of positive progressive with potty training? Just in case.

At least I know going forward I can take diapers off the shopping list.  Diapers don’t come cheap. Even when purchasing them on sale, it can cost anywhere from $0.20-0.30 per diaper, depending on the brand and size. When you are using several diapers a day, it can add up quickly.

I don’t know how some parents succeed in potty training their baby in a week. We started toilet training shortly after he turned 18 months old. It has been a long journey of various phases. We had periods where he would be willing go to toilet when we asked him to go, periods of denial that he has to go when he does, periods of when he would alert us he has to go, but by the time we get to the toilet it’s too late, periods of when he would only alert us after the fact, and then periods that were a mix mash of everything in between.

After this long journey, we’ve finally reached a point of consistent progress. Whew! It’s really a very proud moment for me as a parent. And, a sign that my baby is growing up.

Another major biggie to report is the baby bottles are officially gone. I thought my son would never give up on the baby bottle for milk, but he finally did it.

I’ve tried numerous times to get him off the bottle with great resistance. He wouldn’t accept it with a normal plastic straw, so I tried using the soft flexible straw available on the Sesame Street cup I wrote about in a previous post.

I started offering milk with the special straw during the afternoon feeding. Once I knew he accepted it, I made every effort to continue with the straw for future feedings. The morning feeding received more resistance so we went a couple of days with the morning feeding on the baby bottle and the afternoon with the straw. Gradually, each day I encouraged him to use the straw and soon after he was off the baby bottle entirely.

Just remember to never go back to the baby bottle once you have them off it. It may be hard at first to do it for “every” feeding, so start slow. Just make sure you maintain the “no baby bottle” policy for the specific feeding you have already been successful with.

As I look back, I am happy to see such progress, but it also is a bit sad to know my baby is not really a baby anymore.