“Done Poos!”

Lily’s favourite catch phrase of the moment is “done pooeys, done poos”. Trouble is every time I check these days, there is nothing there. No poos. About 5 minutes after I’ve checked, I usually notice the waft of smelly duds. Doh!

On Monday afternoon, Lily kept uttering her famous catch cry for about 20 minutes. Every time I checked there was nothing there. There were no dirty duds; it was a case of the little girl who cried poos.

Then it came to bath time. I popped her in the bath and went out to get something (and no I wasn’t gone long) when I heard her screaming. By the time I made it in there she was hysterical; screaming like a banshee. She was pointing to something and I thought she was saying “ant”...it was hard to make anything out the way she was crying. I kept reassuring her that the mark on the side of the bath was not an ant, that it was just dirt. After about 30 seconds of her constant screaming I noticed a little ‘log’ float by in the water. Argh! Lily had done a poo in the bath and in doing so had worked her self into such a state she couldn’t be settled down.

That brings me to Tuesday, Wednesday and today. Bath time has been a nightmare. It seems Lily has developed a phobia – and I mean a severe phobia of the bath. It’s like she associates the bath with doing a poo or loosing control. She will not sit. She screams. She stands rigid, with her legs together peering every few seconds over her shoulder as if looking for poo. The poor little mite is so petrified that if she sits down she will not be able to control herself and that feeling is bothering her a lot.

It’s horrible to see. It doesn’t matter how much we reassure her she still screams. I feel so helpless. It takes both Trevor and I to bath her - one to hold her and the other to wash.

Lily used to love bath time. Sigh. I wonder if she will ever like it again.

Tomorrow night we are going to try something else. I know our bath won’t work because she positively hates the spa bath and since we moved in she has only been in there twice and both times she screamed. Showers don’t really work at all either these days – it seems Lily has become a fussy bather. On advice of a friend (thanks Kyles) we’ve decided to try the laundry tub for a change. We need to try something to get her past this experience and over the phobia she has developed of the bath.

Wish us luck!