Sonja's Fearless Friday: A day without diapers

Woohoo! It’s our fifth Fearless Friday post, and it’s from Sonja, with whom we first became acquainted when we admired her fabric alphabet collection.

Last week, I took my 27-month old son to his tot gymnastics class. Just like every week, except this week… without a diaper. (This is the part where if there was a sound track to this, it’d go DUN DUN DUUUUUUN.)

He’d been wearing underwear — deliciously tiny, cute underwear, to be exact — around the house for about two weeks with varying levels of dryness. Basically, as long as I remembered to take him to the bathroom at regular intervals, he’d do his business there. Otherwise, he’d start going in his pants, then come running so I could get him to the bathroom where he’d finish up. At any rate, he seemed ready enough to leave the house without water-proofness.

So I took a deep breath, packed a few spare outfits (yes, more than one, because I was afraid), and got on my way. I took Noah to the bathroom before we left the house, and then again when we got to the community center. All of seven minutes later (I may have been a tiny bit nervous). I took him again after class. So far, so clean.

Then, we got on our way to run some errands. First stop: drug store. We quickly made our way through the store and paid. I was spurred on by mental images of Noah’s bladder as a ticking bomb. As I put the bag in the cart, my heart sank. Noah smelled distinctly, well, poopy.

Even though he insisted that it was just a “wittle fart, Mama!,” I took him to the (decidedly not as nice and clean as the community center) bathroom, where it turned out that the bit about the fart had been entirely true. And then, something truly amazing happened. Noah pooped into the disgusting CVS toilet! I was totally blown away!

Buoyed by our success, we headed for the car and then the grocery store. We made it home with clean, dry pants, which was a really, really nice start to our foray into leaving the house without diapers. We have since had a few accidents in public, one of which taught me that keeping an extra pair of shoes in the car is not a bad idea, but it’s been not nearly as dramatic as I somehow expected it to be. And while we still have days with accidents (sometimes more than one in the same day), I know that we’ve accomplished a solid start to life without diapers. Just the thought of it fills me with awe. A Life Without Diapers. Wow.

*For the record: the following week, he peed his pants so often that I did a load of laundry that consisted of about 80% Noah-pants – it’s a work in progress!

Go, Sonja, Go! This post is part of Fearless Fridays, a series sponsored by method, who makes a hand sanitizer among other wondrous products that you might consider buying if you are living with someone who poops in their pants. Our brave mama Sonja blogs at GirlWithGreenCard.

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Whitney

RookieMoms.com co-founder Whitney lives with her husband, son, and daughter in the San Francisco Bay Area where she writes about parenting, crafts, and activities that moms can do with babies in tow. She and Heather also publish 510Families.com, a site for East Bay parents.