A toddler’s fascination with removing their diaper or pull-up during nap-time or night-time…I had heard about it, but I honestly (and foolishly) was not anticipating it. But, as luck would have it, one day my husband walked into our daughter’s room after a rousing (i.e. no sleep was had) nap-time to discover our little nugget without her shirt on. He almost figured that was as far as her undressing adventure had gone…until he noticed that her pants were on inside-out and backward, and that her crib sheet was wet.
It was the first time she had removed all of her clothing, along with her pull-up, and had peed all over her bed. And I have to hand it to her…she’s one smart cookie to go ahead and put her pull-up back on and attempt getting dressed. If only those pants had made it back on the correct way, her little adventure might have gone unnoticed…until the next time…and there was a next time.
This all started after we began potty-training. She was doing a great job during the day, but toddlers are not capable of “holding it” while they sleep until much later, so she sleeps in a pull-up. After giving it some thought, I can totally understand why she would no longer be interested in sleeping in a wet pull-up. She had learned to dislike the sensation of having wet underwear whenever she had accidents…so why would she want to feel wet at any other point?
We tried to sit down and talk with her about how important it was to leave her pull-up on unless she was in the bathroom…we tried to reason…we tried everything we could think of. And yet…the pull-ups continued to come off and the crib sheets and blankets continued to get washed on a daily basis. I was honestly getting really tired of having to wash the bedding every single day, but wet sheets were nothing compared to the surprise we woke up to one morning when we walked in to find poop everywhere (not only on the sheets and blankets, but the pillow, stuffed animals, and crib rails…not to mention on our child’s hands…well, you get the picture). That was the breaking point.
It was imperative that we find a way to keep a pull-up on our little nugget while she slept…but all of our ideas proved fruitless. And then…as if dropped on my doorstep, wrapped up with a bow, I remembered something that I had tucked away in my brain for just this moment. As I said before…I had heard about this toddler phenomenon…it just took all of this time for me to remember that in reading about this predicament, that I had come across a brilliant and simple idea to fix it…and it soon became my nap-time and night-time sanity saver!
Want to know how you can easily keep your toddler in their diaper or pull-up while they sleep? All you have to do is take a pair of footie-pajamas (that you probably already have on hand) and cut the feet off. Then you put your toddler in the pj’s backward (so that the zipper is on their back) and ta-da!!! They are in a one-piece article of clothing that they are incapable (unless they have hulk-like abilities) of breaking out of, because the zipper is conveniently located on the back where they cannot reach!
The best part…my daughter loves it! We call them her special nap-time jammies. What really gets me is how happily she exclaims (when we get her out of bed), “I kept my pull-up on the whole time!” And my response is always an enthusiastic “That’s amazing!”
Now I know that this has not solved the actual behavior, and I certainly know that footie-pajamas are harder and harder to come by as you grow older…but, I’m really hoping that she outgrows this toddler fascination before she outgrows the pj’s. There’s always hope…right?
