To pick up where I left off with Emma's potty training, well, a lot happened since then. First of all, Emma's crying while on the potty escalated and didn't get better for several days. In fact, instead of her starting to get over her fear of going on the potty, she started having a fear of going, period. That meant she started holding it in and having dry diapers from nap time and even over night! Talk about will power and strong bladder control! She's definitely physically ready to be potty trained, but not mentally.
Anyway, a few days of the crying and then also noticing she was letting it go in very small dribbles, made me start to wonder if she had developed a urinary tract infection. So we scheduled a visit to the doctor for Saturday March 19th. Interestingly, the night before the appointment she had kept her diaper dry all night and had not pee'd all morning. In fact, she still had not pee'd by the time of the appointment later that morning, and yet she had told us several times during the morning that she needed to go potty. The doctor wanted a urine sample to look for signs of infection, which I knew was not going to be easy. And I was correct. Luckily, though, she did end up going, but it was a big fight with tears, screams, and cries, all the while with me squatting down in front of her to help hold her on the toilet (that had no training seat) and while holding a urine sample cup beneath her.
At first she started by peeing just little drips, but she finally let it all out and we got a good sample and she finally emptied her bladder for the first time in over 16 hours. The quick dip test showed some bacteria and blood, so the doctor gave her antibiotics and sent it off to the lab for a full urinalysis. She also gave us a prescription for the skin rash that Emma developed in our first week down under. We had been treating it as a heat rash (prickly heat) with a powder, but the doctor suggested moisturizing and using a prescription strength steroid cream since Emma has a history of eczema. That prescription cream did the trick, by the way, within just a few days it was cleared up!
So we headed home with the antibiotics and a hope that Emma would soon stop crying when she had to pee (assuming it had been hurting her due to the UTI). However, the next day the doctor called with the lab results and said her urine was fine and we could stop the antibiotics. We decided to keep her on them anyway, because we'd rather her have her full dose in case there was an infection (why'd the dip test show bacteria if there wasn't!?), and because part of the reason for the antibiotics was also for her skin since she'd been scratching it so much (to ward off impetigo infection).
Regardless, the crying during peeing did stop after this, which makes me think it may have been hurting her as well and that the antibiotics helped. Now she goes to the potty when she needs to, but she still does hold it in longer than she probably should. In other words, she'll say she has to go to the potty, go sit for several minutes and nothing, and then several minutes later repeat the process...after awhile finally going on the potty. She also still goes while she's sleeping in her diapers too. She's not pooped on the potty since that first time, but we'll cross one bridge at a time.
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