We were thinking about starting potty training this weekend but a gnarly, prolonged diaper rash has deterred that plan and last night left me feeling more like I was house training a puppy.

On Friday Laurel showed the beginnings of a diaper rash when we picked her up from school and it got worse and worse through the weekend. We tried all of our usual methods (including our pediatrician’s terrific remedy for yeast rashes…turns out we diagnosed incorrectly there...) and then last night I decided it was time to go au natural.

It worked out surprisingly well. I explained to Laurel that we were going to let her play diaper free for a while to air out her rash, but that if she had to pee to let me know so I could put a “pee towel” under her (I promise, friends, this is not one from our public hand towel collection) and if she had to poop, well, I wasn’t quite sure what to do about that but my vague plan was to catch it in a wipe. We spent the next half hour with Laurel running around cheerily with me trailing behind her holding out the pee towel, hoping she didn’t have an accident on the awesome shag rug. (Shallow, I know.)

I’ll report back on the effectiveness of this method, which we plan on repeating over the next couple of days, and that of another rash cream product we are trying. Meanwhile, I’m just glad to have made it out of last night’s adventure without having had to field a poop.