When the Dam Breaks 

Nibbles will start pre-school in January – which in some ways feels like another big milestone in their lives (and ours), another sign that they are growing up and life is moving forward, but to be honest, there are so many of these ‘milestones’ that after a while they start to merge together and become just another stone in a cobbled road from there to here.  Their first ride on a bus, the first time they have a play date, the first time they eat a meal with a knife and fork, the first time they blow their nose without leaving snot all over their hands and face, the first time they burp in time to music.  After a while, these firsts become an endless parade of change and even the change itself becomes routine.  Either that or I recently got vaccinated against making a big deal out of every single thing (even though secretly I want to eat cake and drink wine every night to celebrate, yet I suspect that is just because I want to eat cake and drink wine rather than for any other reason).  Regardless of whether or not it is a day to take photos for the album of edited highlights from their lives, we decide that it’s a prompt to get him toilet trained.

Unlike Bubbles, whose toilet training was a) too soon b) totally unprepared c) led by idiots who had barely learnt how to feed her never-mind train her to use the toilet, we have laid some solid groundwork with Nibbles.  Tempted as I am to demonstrate to you, my reader, what a fantastically prepared parent I have become in the period from being a novice parent to now, nearly 18 months later, this book is not a guide to parenting, nor is it about my ability to read, digest and put into practice all the stuff that I belatedly learnt from the internet once we had totally messed it up with child no. 1.   All that terribly useful information that would have been useful if we hadn’t already started the process of potty training and then stubbornly decided that there was no way we were going to put her back into nappies and give up, even if that meant a phenomenal amount of laundry and patience and bleach over the next 12 months.

We haven’t let some glorious weather and a single successful use of the potty when she was playing in the paddling pool decide on the timing, not this time.  No siree.  Fool us once and all that jazz.  Nothing nearly so accidental or reactive or ill-conceived.  No, this time, we have carefully considered our options and selected the most appropriate timing based on the sincere hope that he is ready (what with the practising and stuff we have done), combined with the fact we do not want to toilet train him over Christmas, not only because it is rather last minute but also because it is Christmas and during the heady excitement of it all, we would rather be making endless cups of tea for guests and tidying up the wrapping paper than keeping a beady eye on Nibbles in case he does the wee dance.  The thought of a poocident over a tower of new toys is just too much to contemplate and somehow a potty with fairy lights or baubles on it seems just wrong (and like even more of an accident waiting to happen).  Which leaves us with little choice (and we decide we may want longer than a weekend), and therefore we consciously decide on October half term (or rather by eliminating all the other choices are left with only one option).

We prepare fastidiously, if only because I do not want to have to wash double-digit quantities of pants in a single day, like we did with Bubbles.  As with many of the decisions we have made since being parents, we spent some time one evening discussing the best timing, comparing our options, eliminating those that do not fit until we a singularly left with a clear and definite plan.  We both nod in agreement when we jointly decide to train him over half-term, starting on the Saturday.

Andy is a tad surprised then to come home on the Friday and notice that there is a potty in the lounge and Nibbles is wondering around with no trousers on and a pair of pants.

‘Oh pants, Nibbles,’ he comments (observantly, and earns nil points for stating the obvious).

‘Yeah, sorry, I thought I might just give it a go today to see how things went,’ I reply sheepishly.

‘How did it go?’ he asks, wondering just how many times I have had to decontaminate the house since he left for work this morning.

‘Couldn’t have gone better,’ I reply, because truly it could not have done.  I am literally amazed at what has happened today, or rather at what didn’t happen that I would have bet good money on happening.  He used the toilet all day without a single accident.  Everything seems to be going to plan.  Although it’s not really.  It goes according to a plan that we never planned for, for we expected there to be considerably more pee and poo outside of the toilet than has happened, in fact this is going better than we planned and far, far better than we had ever even hoped eve on our most optimistic hopefulness.  With one slight deviation.

Nibbles instantly nailed the need-a-wee-go-for-a-wee body and toilet snap.  There is none of that pointing to a large puddle with confusion and stating something both blindly obvious and far too late for us to intervene, always when we have no change of clothes, we are in a crowded place and we have to take them home naked from the waist down and pray they don’t have another accident in the car.  In fact, things go so well I take him for a walk around a lovely viewpoint in the sunshine.  We’re walking along, having a chat about something and nothing and suddenly he is not walking beside me anymore.  I turn and simultaneously ask ‘what are you doing?’ when it is patently obvious that he is pulling down his trousers to have pee, just like that.  Okay, his technique could do with a bit of help and there are some splashes and drips in places I wouldn’t have thought he could reach, but the whole recognise-he-needs-to-go-and-go routine seems to be solidly in place.

Except solid it is not.

Given our solitary experience to date with Bubbles was one chaotic dirty protest (or so it seemed), we steal ourselves and expect to be on super-high alert all weekend.  Saturday goes surprisingly well, another almost clean slate as if Nibbles hasn’t realised that this is the one weekend of his life where he can contaminate to his heart’s content without much comeback from us.  We start to feel a bit cocky, a bit as if we have just earned a gold star for parenting.  We feel that we have done something right and that his perfect record is justly deserved on our behalf, rather than perhaps indicative of something he has done.  We are taking all the credit for this one, whether or not we have earned it.

It is now Sunday, and we are rewarded with a glorious day of October sunshine – both unexpected and delightful.  We decide to go on a bit of walk, in order to get things moving a bit, for while Nibbles has mastered the art of weeing, he hasn’t had a poo for three days.  Three days we say to each other, both wincing and clenching as we say it.  Despite our best efforts, and a menu based almost entirely on sweetcorn, nothing solid has come out of our boy, despite the vast quantities (or so it seems to us) of food that he has eaten.  We can only imagine that he has an intestine as (allegedly) congested as Elvis in his final days, but without the fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. We have encouraged, bribed, applauded, left him to go in private and almost every combination of things we can think of in order to move things through and to no avail.  I have crouched in the bathroom and read him a story in the hope that being distracted by a story might help him relax and it to just kind of fall out of him.  We are starting to despair, whilst simultaneously preparing ourselves for what we shudder to guess may be the most enormous explosion of poo since The Dinosaur That Pooped A Planet.  It’s at times like these that I wish I was still an engineer, for a hazmat suit would come in handy right now.

Today we are going for a walk, with a bagful of wipes, plastic bags, changes of clothes and a potty, in the hope that some exercise might massage things down his colon.  Almost as soon as we start walking, he says he needs a poo.  Result (we think).  He sits on the potty, but nothing happens.  It could be that he is feeling rather exposed – he is on the potty at the side of a field, just off a path where families and dogs are walking in the sun.  We turn our backs on him and let him sit, like bouncers protecting a VIP on a dress down day.  Nothing.  He can’t go.  We wait a while, hoping that if we leave him long enough… but no.  So we pack up and continue walking.  Five minutes later, he says he needs a poo again, and the same thing happens.  Well not identical, this time a fart finds its way out.  My poor little boy – he is chock full of the stuff, but is holding onto it for dear life.

At least, I say to Andy in an aside, we know that he can hold it for quite a while.  Up to three days in fact, so if he ever says he is desperate for a poo, we will know with some certainty that he can probably hold it a little while before he needs the loo.

We are nearly back at the car, when for the third time he says he needs to poo.  We’re near the toilets so Andy takes him there hoping that the cubicles will prove a more conducive environment, whilst Bubbles and I go to the play area and swing, spin and slide until we can slide no more.  Andy is taking an incredibly long time I think, I wonder what is going on.  Still, I am sure he can manage I think to myself.  As he comes out of the toilet, the look on his face tells me everything I need to know, a snarl and look of queasy disgust, coupled with the fact that Nibbles has got new trousers on and he barely needs to go into details, but of course, he has to share.

‘We were too late…’ he states, because the blindly obvious is never so obvious that we shouldn’t state it out loud.

‘It was everywhere’ he continues, as his nose wrinkles at the memory.  A shudder escapes involuntarily down his spine and I can’t help but smile slyly.  I know I should be ‘there, there’ing him, but in my mind I am leaping up and high-fiving myself.  For all the times I cleared up after my daughter, for all the times I showered my children and myself to rid us of excrement and vomit, for all the times that I told him about it and he seemed singularly unconcerned about the hideousness of the stuff that come out of them, I just had to smile.

Smug in the knowledge that for once, it wasn’t me.