Potty training woes

I'm not sure if it's because we didn't wrap our brains around this one particular part of parenting soon enough, or if Gabriel is just a little slower than average in developmental stages, but we are having a time with potty training.

We bought him a potty chair too early, I realize now. I think he had just turned 2? Or maybe even 18 months. He wanted to sit in it lots at first. Now he protests almost every time I ask if he wants to sit in it. I started the T. Berry Brazelton book on potty training, but realized Gabriel had not reached all of the steps showing that he is ready to try this (Dr. Brazelton's approach is that they have to come around on this ON THEIR OWN, without much pushing with Mom and Dad if you want long-term success).

But the pressures of society, I guess, got us thinking that we really needed to start thinking about this since he's three now. We set up a box of favorite books by the chair, and said those were his special potty chair books now. This worked for a little while. But now he tries to take the books to his room instead of leaving them in the bathroom, which just starts another conflict. We started using pullups in the hope that he would not like the feeling of being wetter, but he doesn't seem to mind walking around completely soaked. This makes me frustrated and guilty that I forget to check him more often.

I asked my friend Christine for advice, and she said I should be taking him to sit on the potty chair every two hours or so. Well, trying that often makes Gabriel really upset, which is one of the things Dr. Brazelton says will do alot of damage. Christine also suggested letting him wear normal underpants so that he would really feel the wetness, as long as I was prepared to do laundry all the time. I haven't convinced myself that this would be a good idea yet, mostly because Gabriel just doesn't seem to mind being wet.

I've tried reasoning, comparisons to other kids, even tears. It just doesn't seem like he's the least bit interested, which is very disheartening to me. I'm trying to resign myself to not put any pressure on him, but it's getting tougher since I wanted to be farther along in this process when the new baby gets here. I've been told that he will probably regress a little bit when that happens, but right now we have no place to regress from!

Gabriel has triplets in his Mother's Day Out class that turn three in December, and their Mom already has them trained. I realize this was probably out of monetary necessity (she also has an almost one-year-old.) Can you imagine having to buy all those diapers? - UGH. But this made me feel like an utter failure. I still want to ask her what method she used if I can catch her one day. But in the meantime I think I will just lay off for awhile until I come up with a new plan. Or maybe I need to let Gabriel take the reins and just try to gently guide. I have no idea. AAGGGHHHHH!!!!