Let’s get one thing straight: my daughter can pee. She pees like a champion – a confident, free-spirited, splashy little goddess of bodily autonomy. No diapers, no drama, just pure hydraulic excellence. If there were toddler Olympics, she’d win gold in Urination, maybe even break a record.
But when it comes to poop – ah, that’s when the orchestra of panic begins.
It’s not a digestive issue, it’s a philosophical one. She’s three and a half, that age when toddlers hover between divinity and dictatorship, and she has decided that pooping is unsafe, suspicious, perhaps even a government conspiracy. She can tell you when she has to go, she just… refuses to participate.
We have one potty. One. A humble, unassuming piece of green plastic. We also have a pink toilet seat – her “official” throne – which she sometimes regards with respect, sometimes with horror. When she has to poop, we offer the diaper. It’s our peace treaty. A compromise between progress and survival. She usually accepts it after lunch, when we’re three days into the Great Withholding and her internal organs are filing complaints.
And there we are again, circling each other like nervous diplomats. Me, pretending I’m not panicking. Her, pacing like she’s negotiating the terms of surrender.
The advice from the outside world? Never-ending.
“Oh, she’ll do it when she’s ready.”
“You just have to be calm.”
“She’s manipulating you.”
“Try a reward system.”
“Try letting her sit backwards on the toilet.”
Everyone knows best. Especially the people who haven’t cleaned a poop diaper in 30 years. Even when I say, please, just don’t talk about it, she’ll get there on her own. There’s always someone leaning in with a knowing smirk: “She’s so big already, and she still wears a diaper?”
Yes, thank you, mom, she also still believes in fairies and has a favourite teddy bear. We all contain multitudes.
Meanwhile, our family’s emotional stability now rotates around her digestive rhythm. Every day after lunch, we wait – the way farmers wait for rain. There’s hope, tension, superstition. Sometimes she does it, sometimes she doesn’t. When she finally does, she looks both relieved and personally betrayed. And I – exhausted, humble, victorious – whisper to myself, “We made it another week.”
I’ve started to suspect that all Croatian mothers secretly live this way. We carry guilt like it’s an accessory.
If she poops – my fault.
If she doesn’t – also my fault.
If she’s scared – definitely, absolutely my fault.
We are trained from birth to believe everything is on us. The state of the economy, the weather, and yes, the bowel movements of our children.
Sometimes I imagine gathering all the unsolicited advisors – the aunts, the friends, the shop ladies, the well-meaning strangers, and locking them in my bathroom for an hour with a constipated three-year-old. Let’s see who cracks first. Let’s see who’s “ready.”
But instead, I just nod politely and smile while internally muttering curses that would make a priest blush.
Because the truth is, she’ll get there. One day she’ll just… go. She’ll march to the bathroom, use her pink toilet seat like it’s no big deal, and flush away months of fear and drama. And no one will clap, and no one will comment, and I will quietly cry from relief and maybe open a bottle of wine at 11 a.m.
And now? We wait. We breathe. We pretend not to care. And every time someone opens their mouth to offer wisdom, I think:
“Ah yes, thank you, yet another prophet of poop.”
Maybe this is her first rebellion. Her way of saying: “You can’t rush me, mama. You can’t control everything.”
And honestly – fair.
She’s right.
So we sit together in our little bathroom, two anxious women in different stages of evolution, both just trying to let go.
Until then, I’m learning to embrace the absurdity. Maybe this is her first act of resistance, her first boundary. Maybe she’s saying: “You can make me eat broccoli, you can make me wear shoes, but you will not control my colon.” Honestly? Feminist icon behaviour.
So I’ll keep nodding, keep pretending I’m chill, keep buying probiotics and praying to the gods of fiber. One day, she’ll poop. She’ll do it quietly, privately, and she won’t remember that for months, it was our family’s full-time occupation.
And when she finally flushes triumphantly, I’ll smile through tears and say, “See? You did it.”
But inside, I’ll whisper: We both did, honey. We both finally let go.
Erika Matic writes about motherhood, identity, and the small absurdities that make up a life. Her work explores the border between exhaustion and poetry, where love often hides – sometimes behind a diaper.
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