Pooping at naptime!

Many children poop at nap-time or bedtime before falling to sleep or in some cases on waking. When potty training, this can cause a great deal of stress for parents. A recent poll that I did on my Facebook group and Instagram story, resulted in 46% of the parents, saying YES their child pooped at nap-time.

Many children poop at nap-time or bedtime

Small babies will often poop over night and this can also be made worse when you first introduce solids, especially if your child is eating lots of fruit of foods high in sugar or fibre in the later part of the evening either at dinner or for a bedtime snack.

As children get older, they tend to outgrow pooping over night, but it can be a common issue for those toddlers who are being potty trained to withhold a poop until they are in the comfort of their own bed or crib, just as the poll I created reflected.

When children poop in their bed, parents often get flustered and worry that it’s a barrier to their overall success.

As a potty training consultant, I see this as a good thing, as the poop is coming out! 

It’s a much more stressful situation if they are not letting it out at all. Another thought is that, if you are potty training, its common to do an offset from daytime awake hour training to nap and nighttime training, so if you are still offering a pull up or diaper for crib time, the message that is being sent is to use it, and that is exactly what your little one is doing. So they are not really doing it wrong or having an accident.

But why nap time? I hear you say!

When a child poops during a nap-time period, they are likely doing it either before they fall to sleep or on waking - they may even do it mid sleep cycle and then go back to sleep but this is not as common.

What this behaviour is really telling you, is that your child is feeling safe in this space.

Think about when you poop, do you want an audience? (Probably not) but if you have toddlers and a dog, you likely have one anyway.

When children go through the potty training process, lots of children will go and hide to have a poop, under the table, behind a curtain, behind the couch and so on. This is telling you that they are very aware of what their body has to do, they just need a safe space to do it.

In a nutshell, it's a short term issue. 

The reason being, long term, its extremely rare to have children poop over night on a nightly basis.

Once your child drops the nap, if they were still in a diaper or pull up for the nap, they will stop pooping at naptime by default, the poop will likely shift to another time, or you can also start to introduce some potty time in this window, after lunch, where the nap would have been.

Often when the diaper is removed at naptime, some children will hold onto it until bedtime, but don’t be afraid to remove the diaper and put a small potty in the room which will still allow your child some privacy. If anything they are going to go before bed, so they can still go on their own in the comfort of their own room and have you come in after the fact to help with the flushing and rinsing process.

Lot’s of children will get the pooping on the potty down, after they get the peeing on the potty down. Poop can be more scary for them, it has more negative connections attached to it; the way it looks, the way it smells, out reaction to it and so on.

Some children will have struggled with constipation and this can also create more negative associations to releasing a bowel movement so when they get the sensations that a poop is coming, they can tense up and hold onto it, creating more poop to get backed up into the colon.

In some cases this can result in encopresis 

Appropriate doses of soluble fibre can help your child pass a poop, but always run this past your Dr. before administering it. Having poops that are easy to pass, is helpful to get a better gauge on your child’s regularity or poop schedule, you can then use this as a baseline and wean them off the medication as you gain more success.

If your child is having issues pooping and you want to chat it out - feel free to fill out this form to discuss a potential plan of action, to help you support your little one through this hurdle.