Worries…

I have been trying not to worry. About anything. It wakes/keeps me up at night and I need all the sleep I can get. Yesterday, though, Keeley didn’t use the toilet until about 10 am. She had a wet overnight diaper and I didn’t think much of her not going first thing in the AM, she seems determined not to sit there, and I don’t want her screaming first thing. I guess maybe that’s selfish on my part. Usually, if I stick her up there, she’ll go. Yesterday, though, she wouldn’t go before nap, either. So once in the morning. Is that unusual for a toddler in potty training stages? Particularly one who doesn’t want to be interrupted to use the bathroom, when life is so much more fun? I just don’t know. She didn’t drink much yesterday, either, because I was restricting her food. For a few days now, she’s been refusing to eat  some of her meals and trying to eat only fruit and skip everything else. Is it her teeth? Is she just being a 2 year old? Hard to tell. So needless to say, she ate less (but maybe similar calories?) because she wasn’t grazing all morning. However, she still had a piece of toast loaded with jam, an egg, and part of a piece of ham (why she’s refusing ham is beyond me, that’s what makes me think maybe her teeth?)…

So she had a cup of juice and a little bit of milk instead of a cup of juice and about 2.5 cups of milk. I gave her water with lunch and she didn’t drink much of that. Typically, she’ll gulp milk and then perhaps not want to eat as much since her belly is full. So I had switched to giving her water with meals. Anyway, I guess she finally went pee when her dad came home, although I was sitting in the kitchen and didn’t hear her. She went again later, again, I didn’t hear her, and usually you can hear the stream from across the room. I wonder if she was leaking it more than a steady stream, or if she just really hadn’t taken in enough fluid.

Of course, since we STILL don’t have a water softener, I had to do something about her diapers. They were giving her a slight irritation (if you don’t use enough soap , or if the soap doesn’t rinse out fully–that happens–hard water makes diapers almost impossible to clean)… anyway…so I bleached them. I used a little bit in the wash and did a huge wash cycle with nothing and an extra rinse behind it. Apparently that wasn’t enough, she got a couple of little bumps on her rear. Fabulous. Plus, I’d used a wet ‘toilet paper’ wipe a couple of times in the morning to ‘refresh’ her hiney after the diaper came off–you know the kind with perfume…and she had a bubble bath.

So.. the question is.. is she holding it in because it hurts, or was she sitting there bawling last night because she’d already peed in the tub unbeknownst to us and she really didn’t need to go? I gave her a bath and she didn’t flinch at all when being washed, so it’s hard to tell. Had she really just had that little to drink and had pee run down her cheeks instead of squirting out like a fire hose, or is there something really wrong? The only thing I can think of (UTI) says that kids will pee excessively, and she was having the opposite problem. Or is it a problem? I know while she’s been potty training she was refusing to ‘go’ elsewhere, but she seemed to be doing better about that. I was specifically worried she’d get an infection from holding it in too long, so of course I’ve been staying at home when I’d really like to do a lot of things (like go buy a water softener)…we have to time everything perfectly so she’s not dancing or wetting herself on accident while we’re out.

With this pregnancy, and her new found toilet freedom, I’d been ‘letting her go’ the last few days, and she told me when she had to go. I thought this was normal and fine, even though she was holding it a bit longer than I would choose for her to do, but hey, it’s her body. My body is pregnant and thinks it has to go all the time, so it’s hard for me to judge.

Battle plan for (later) this morning is to check her diaper, if it’s dry to wait until her doctor opens and take her in. Then I get to explain the bleach in the diapers, the perfumey wet wipe, and the bubble bath. All possible causes of irritation. It’s the diaper thing that pisses me off. It was a necessary step–she was being irritated by the ammonia in her urine due to build up. It happens to kids whose parents have hard water and don’t take steps to resolve it. That’s on us. Specifically it’s on me. I should have rinsed the diapers one more time, etc. Luckily, I washed most of the affected diapers (she’s only using 7 at the moment) again yesterday, with a double wash and huge double rinse, which should take care of any lingering bleach issues. My fervent hope is that she just really didn’t have to go much yesterday and that overnight, she’ll have wet, and back to normal today.

She’s SUCH a healthy kid. This is ALL on me. I take care of her every day. I was so busy trying to figure out how to get her to only eat at meal time, or at least get her to EAT certain things at meal time, that I didn’t pay enough attention to her fluid input/output yesterday. Maybe I should have taken her then. UTI’s are NOT uncommon in kids her age. I’ve been so lucky not to have issues with that. However, I will assume they would give her antibiotics, which will give her a yeast infection. Which means no cloth diapers. And I’m assuming more treatment. Did I mention that I don’t really like using disposable diapers on her, particularly since she only wears one at night and we haven’t purchased any since she was SIX months old?  Do I really want to pay $20 to get one or two diapers for her and then have a whole pack of diapers that are completely pointless to us otherwise? Seems kind of stupid. I do have a couple of ‘disposable’ inserts that I could use–I’d have to drag them out of the bowels of her closet. Again, I hate them.

I may go and buy her some cranberry juice just in case, first thing in the morning. It can’t hurt her, since she typically has juice 1/day anyway, to substitute cranberry instead of orange or something else. I don’t want to wait too long, since it’s Friday, and we had plans for this weekend. They could easily be rearranged, but still.

I have my US next week and of course I’ve been focused on that, and prayers for a healthy baby, and all that seemed to get me is a toddler that refused to pee.  Possibly with pain, but that’s hard to tell.  I gave her tylenol last night, hoping that if she had some contact pain due to irritation of the wet wipe, bleach, or bubble bath, that it would go away  after a regular bath, overnight and she’d feel better this morning.

Update: Completely wet diaper at 4 a.m. No bumps/redness. Score! She didn’t seem sore or anything. I used a wipe and washed and patted her dry and put some sweatpants on her (no diaper!) She woke up at 6:30 and…

She seems fine. The first thing she did? Was ask for her sucker (which she got at the tractor dealer last night)
I kid you not. The lights were still off, everything.
so.. yeah. I gave it to her, went pee myself and reassessed.

I put HER on the potty with her sucker. Read her a book. Asked her if she wanted a drink.
Got her the drink, and she went pee and tooted a bunch. It seemed like she strained a little bit,
but I asked if she felt good, and she said yes, so I said, yup it feels good to toot sometimes. ( I don’t want her thinking it hurts to go, you know?)

So hopefully, that’s the end of it. As I said earlier, her bottom looked fine. Didn’t see anything
on the toilet tissue other than dampness, so no tinted pee or anything to indicate UTI.

Guess she just really didn’t have to go.