Potty training and it’s impact (or not) on sleep

I  should start by saying I am in no way a potty training expert. I’m probably the opposite. In fact, I’ve had such a horrendous potty training experience that you could honestly say I may have potty training PTSD. I will remind anyone who asks (or doesn’t ask) that I view potty training to be the single most difficult/stressful parenting task of all of the tasks. However, this isn’t really about potty training specifically. This is about how potty training can impact sleep. And for me, I made sure it didn’t impact sleep (or impacted sleep as little as possible).

Potty training as a multi step process

Overall, potty training doesn’t have to really change much about sleep. I view potty training as a multi step process when it comes to how the day is broken down and when sleep happens.

Step 1: teach your child to spend the day without diapers

Step 2: teach your child to nap without diapers

Step 3: teach your child to sleep all night without diapers. 

Some people like to take on all of these steps at once, and that’s totally fine. It just means sleep will be impacted a bit more. I chose to worry about one at a time and by doing that the diapers sort of disappeared on their own during sleep times. To be clear, this was a choice that I made because maintaining the sleep schedules was more important than eliminating diapers or pull ups FOR ME. This doesn’t have to be your choice, but for the purpose of this blog I’m going to talk about my own experience (because again, I’m not a potty expert). 

Dropping the nap diaper

When I first began potty training, I only potty trained during awake times. During naps and bedtime, I switched to pull ups and called them “sleep underwear”. This was my little way of telling them that they were still potty training and done with diapers in the traditional sense, and things were still changing, but their bodies didn’t know how to go potty when they were sleeping. 

Joey was actually potty trained after she had already dropped her nap, so she only got sleep underwear at night. Landen got sleep underwear for naps and night, and guess what. When he dropped his nap the sleep underwear went with it. I never napped him in underwear and it was seriously that simple. 

Now, my two potty trained kids have lower sleep needs and they both dropped their naps on the younger end of average so this worked well. I know this may not work for everyone, especially if you have a kid napping at school and they also need to be fully potty trained to go to school. In this case, I would probably limit liquids an hour before nap time and make sure the last thing they do before the nap is go to the bathroom. Again though, not a potty expert and sleep is my priority. I’ll probably potty train Graham soon - ish, and he has high sleep needs so I anticipate the nap will stick around longer. I’ll come back and update this when I encounter that but honestly, I’ll probably do the same thing and just deal with the pull-ups until he’s ready to get rid of them (they’re consistently dry at nap time) or get rid of the nap.

Dropping the bedtime diaper - kid 1

Obviously nights are very different because we don’t drop our night sleep, and nights are much much longer than naps. When I began potty training Landen, I read a book that had a lot of useful information and a lot of awful information in the form of pressure and judgment. As a first time mom about to take on the most difficult task in all of parenting, I tried to follow this book almost to a T because the author made it seem like I had to for it to work. I have a lot to say about this book and I’m happy to discuss it if you’d like to message/email me, and ultimately it was the method I used for both kids, but I am so glad that I did not follow her night time training advice. She said basically that you MUST night train at the same time that you day train (or very soon after) and you need to wake your kid up at 10 and 2 for “dream pees”. 

Guys. There is NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING in parenting that you must do except maybe keep them alive and provide an education of some sort because it’s the law. Taking away diapers or pull ups overnight though? This is not a requirement even if you want to take them away during the day.

So many moms in the mom groups on Facebook (my very well researched/science backed information source, she said sarcastically) always said don’t worry about night time training because it is hormonal and one day it will happen on its own. I honestly didn’t actually believe this because of the damn book that made me feel like one day I’d have to intervene. In fact, my kid was peeing in the potty all day every day and in his pull-up at night without thought. He basically never had any daytime accidents. This wasn’t at all confusing for him. The pull up was so full that sometimes he even peed through and we had to use booster pads or change the sheets in the middle of the night. And as someone with sleep anxiety, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready to intervene and take those pull ups away. 

So I didn’t. And guess what. It happened. One day seemingly out of NOWHERE, this kid started waking up completely dry night after night after night. For him, sleep was never impacted for one second due to potty training.

Now, I don’t want to say night training is always this easy. First of all, I did feel a lot of stress and pressure as he approached five years old and was still wearing pull ups to sleep after being potty trained at 2.5. But I also didn’t have the mental space to deal with it and I’m so glad I waited. And if you’re like “okay but my kid is 6 and it hasn’t happened yet” I have good news for you in two parts.

Part 1: the older they get, the easier it is to interrupt sleep and for everything to still be okay. So if you want to night train an older kid, sleep should still stay on track through the process. Allison Jandu at The Potty Training Consultant says that many kids are ready to sleep without pull ups before we believe they are AND this doesn’t have to impact sleep. Apparently many kids pee in their pull ups right when they wake up, so if you swoop in as you see them beginning to stir and whisk them away to the bathroom, you may be able to get rid of those pull ups sooner if that’s something you want to do. This is just a little tip for “night training” without waking your kid up overnight. 

Part 2: if you don’t want to night train, 4, 5, even 6 is still a perfectly normal age to still be in pull ups overnight. Emily Oster, who I trust more than anyone on this planet with information, once told me (through her Wednesday Q&A, so very official information as usual, although I wish I could say she told me directly) that for many kids this skill doesn’t develop until up to age 7.

Dropping the bedtime diaper - kid 2

It wasn’t quite this simple for child #2. You see, when she started potty training she took it SERIOUSLY and WOULD NOT PEE IN THE PULL UP AT NIGHT. In the beginning I even begged her to pee in the pull up because I was so tired from taking her to the bathroom all night (I do not recommend begging your kid to pee in a pull up while potty training). But instead she insisted on waking up to pee. You can read that whole story here but for the purposes of this blog yes, sleep was obviously disrupted by this. However, I let it get disrupted more by assuming she had to be moved to a bed since she was waking up to pee.

You do not need to move your child to a bed when they are potty training. In fact, if sleep is going well then I would recommend NOT moving your child to a bed to potty train, or ever (read: as long as you can safely leave them in the crib). Your 2 or 3 year old will call for you when they have to pee. They will not walk themselves to the bathroom, go pee, and walk themselves back to their bed. Whether or not you have to get them from bed or a crib, you will have to get them. I overestimated Joey’s maturity level and THAT’S why sleep was disrupted. 

What I should have done was take her to the bathroom and walk her back to bed. Would she have been waking up more than usual? Yes. Would it have been a disaster sleep wise? No. She likely would have gone to the bathroom and then right back to bed. And that’s okay. It’s annoying, yes. But it is not going to destroy all of the great sleep routines you already have in place. And it also ended. She doesn’t still wake up 1-2 times a night and call for me to go pee. She now sleeps all night without peeing and I am now a true believer that staying dry all night is developmental and hormonal. I’ll let you know when I develop this hormonal ability myself. Until then, I will never intervene with a child’s overnight pull up use, and I will never recommend a client do so either unless there is a medical reason. 

So that’s it. In a nutshell my biggest tip for not letting potty training impact sleep is to just not do it overnight. If this doesn’t work for you and your goals, unfortunately I’m not the person to help you, but there are a lot of people out there who can!