Potty training and its impact (or not) on sleep

I should start by saying I am in no way a potty training expert. After fully potty training 2 kids and in the process of potty training my third and final, I’m still in “I despise potty training” mode. 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 (at least for the first 6.5 years of parenting I’ve experienced). 

For this reason, I truly believe that you and your toddler need to be well rested to be successful. This means keeping the nap time and bedtime routines the same, at least in the beginning, to ensure adequate rest. You need sleep to teach a new skill and your little one needs sleep to learn a new skill! 

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 me, this is a less stressful route, but that doesn’t mean it has to be your choice too. I am just here to share my own story.

Using sleep underwear (AKA pull-ups)

When I first began potty training with all 3 kids, I only potty trained during awake times. This means that when my kids were awake, diapers were 100% off limits. During naps and bedtime, I switched to pull ups and called them their “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. 

Ms. 5 was actually potty trained after she had already dropped her nap, so she only got sleep underwear at night. Mr. 6 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 fully 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. Kids at this age usually have the capacity to hold it for 2 hours, and most kids at this age also probably aren’t napping longer than 2 hours. 

As you may know from my obsessively talking about it on Instagram, I am currently in the process of potty training Mr. 2, my high sleep needs kiddo. He is NOWHERE near ready to drop his nap and I am nowhere near ready to remove the nap time diaper. Sleep is and always will be a priority in my house. Right now, he’s napping more than 2 hours, and he’s definitely waking up with a wet diaper. But we’re only 10 days into potty training and every day he’s getting better and better at recognizing where the pee goes. 

For now, I plan to continue doing what I’m doing and if I notice his diaper is dry after the nap, or if he starts to shorten the nap as he approaches 3 years old, I’ll reconsider my position on this diaper. Either way though, we will ALWAYS do a pre nap pee before putting the pullup on, and I will ALWAYS remind him that this is “sleep underwear” because his body doesn’t have control when he’s sleeping, but pee and poop go in the potty.

Night Training

Obviously nights are very different because we don’t drop our night sleep, and nights are much longer than naps. When I began potty training Mr. 6, 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, but I am so glad that I did not follow her night time training advice (and I actually veered off course with the rest of her advice after failing the first time, and did not use it for my other two kids, so if you know what book I’m talking about just know she is WRONG and there is more than one way to do it). Anyway, she said 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/feed them, 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. I promise you, your kid will learn to sleep all night without the diaper.

So many moms in the mom groups on Facebook 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. It 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, a few months before his 5th birthday, this kid started waking up completely dry night after night after night. And that never ended. He was night trained. For him, sleep was never impacted for one second due to potty training.

When is it no longer normal to use night time pull-ups?

Now, I don’t want to say night training is always this easy. 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 mostly on track through the process. 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, although I wish I could say she told me directly) that for many kids this skill doesn’t develop until up to age 7. If you have a 7 year old who still cannot remain dry all night, that is when you intervene, or more likely consult with your pediatrician. If you’re just starting potty training, you probably have a 2 or 3 year old if I had to guess, so you have plenty of time.

Is it always this easy? Just wait until they wake up dry and keep sleep on track?

No. Every kid is different. It actually 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. But instead she insisted on waking up to pee. 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.

But don’t you have to sleep in a bed to be fully night trained?

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 my daughter’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 most nights, and I am now a true believer that staying dry all night is developmental and hormonal. 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. 

Now as I said I am not a potty expert. But 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. 

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! (My go to is Potty Made Possible @pottymadepossible - Sarah and Allison are the real potty pros.