Aches and Pains

For all you wimps out there who think early potty training is not for you, use me as an example. After taking a week off of potty-training for my soon-to-be 9-month old because of travel, I started again in full force but managed to tweak my left lat after a day of lifting DS over the big potty. (I was also one of those new moms who developed De Quervain's tendonitis

after lifting DS one too many times from his playpen.) So we will go back to using the little potty and hoping that DS will soon learn to climb onto it on his own.

Despite the aches and pains, I'm still convinced that early potty training is the way to go, and not just because I don't like to change dirty diapers (which like my co-blogger I do hate with a vengeance). It's because my active 20-pounder feels much freer out of his bulky diaper. You can see the joy in his face when he is released from his disposables and allowed to crawl and roll around in the buff. I may sound like a broken record about this but it's what keeps me trying with EC.

I liken the experience of potty training to that of a puppy. Can you imagine forcing a puppy to wear a diaper for the first year or two of his life? He'd be the laughingstock of his puppy peers. Just like we train puppies to eliminate in a certain place (e.g., on a pad, outdoors on grass), we should be able to train our just-as-smart babies to eliminate on cue or based on some other "trigger" (e.g., sitting on one's potty, or removal of one's diaper/underpants).

I truly believe that anything worth doing takes effort, whether you're a superwoman or not, so we'll push forward--temporary back pain and all.