Oh boy, this is something I was not looking forward to tackling! We’ve had day time potty training waxed for two years (read about how we got it right, over here) and night time potty trained for about a year now so I feel pretty confident in dishing out some tips that worked for us as well as advice that I got from other moms. If you’re dreading this next milestone like I was, here’s how to potty train your toddler… well how we managed to anyway!

Most articles on how to night time potty train your toddler say that you should only start once they have dry nappies for one or two consecutive weeks. Aria never got there; she would go three days with a dry nappy and then the next day she would have a super heavy nappy in the morning. I think that the reason for this is because she drinks so much water, which I really didn’t want to discourage.

We tried to limit water after 5pm but that didn’t work in our favour either; Aria would have a full on frothy if she didn’t get a cup of water before bed and to be honest, if my kid is that passionate about drinking water, I definitely do not want to discourage it!

So, since all the standard things didn’t work for us, how did we do it?

One evening when we were chatting about it, Dan and I just decided that once Aria’s current pack of nappies were finished, that was it, we were going to night time potty train her. We were waking up during the night with Maia anyway as she was a newborn at that stage so it just made sense to kill two birds with one stone and take Aria to the toilet while we were at it.

To be honest, what we did was really simple and worked really well. As usual we popped Aria on the toilet before bath time and then we took her for what I’ve dubbed a “dream wee” at about 10pm when we went to bed. For the first week, we took her again at 2am, then the next week at 3am, then 4am, 5am and then eventually we left her to wake up in the morning before taking her to the toilet. Basically what we did was train her body and to be honest I am amazed at how well and quickly it worked!

Of course there was an accident every now and then, and these days they are very few and far between and on the whole Aria has done so incredibly well. For a month or so we left her potty next to her bed and she would wake up if she needed to use it during the night.

We still took her for a “dream wee” at 10pm every night for about a month or so after she managed to go through the night, but to be honest, it was hardly an inconvenience and if it means a dry bed in the morning, then I was happy to do it! Side note: I say “I” but actually it’s Dan that took her every night.

I thought it would be helpful to include some tips from other moms who have night time potty trained their toddlers because as I’m sure you’re well aware by this stage of parenting, not every child is the same and different things work for different families; so here are some more pointers that you may find helpful:

• Use cloth nappies so that your toddler can feel that they are wet, this usually leads them to not wanting to wet themselves anymore.
• Use a product like DryNites Pyjama Pants to transition from nappy to underwear
• Layer sheets and waterproofs/bed protectors so that changing a wet bed in the middle of the night is so much easier.
• Don’t rush it.
• Make sure your daytime potty training is consistent.
• Celebrate their wins

Have you night time potty trained your toddler? How did it go and what are your top tips? Let me know in the comments so that we can all learn from each other.

*Disclaimer: The social media posts of this blog post are sponsored by DryNites South Africa