E is for Elimination Communication

I talked about using EC with Violet in this post when she was about 7 months old.  Since then, we have had a long road, and we have had very few poopy diapers.  In fact, even when Violet got a horrible stomach flu (this has happened twice now) and had really bad diarrhea, she still didn't poop in diapers.  That is control.  The peeing... well, that's another story.

So Violet has been almost exclusively pooping in the toilet since she was 3 months old, and peeing in the toilet as long too- just not exclusively.  At 26 months, she still pees in her diapers.  We are working on it, but don't feel a huge urge to pressure her.  We do a lot of naked time at home (mostly because she doesn't want to wear clothes, not because of some structured naked time).  We got her cute panties that are not for peeing in, but accidents still happen in them (although she is more prone to tell us she has to pee if she's wearing panties).  We try not to make a big deal of accidents, and we try to stay positive.  Anyway, that's where we're at with her.

If nothing else, we've giving her a comfort with the toilet, which many children her age don't have.  Many parents I know face the issue of a child afraid of or confused by the potty.  By offering the option without pressure early on, you solidify that connection between our bodily waste and the toilet.

At 6 weeks, my new baby Desmond is making leaps and bounds.  He's gone pee over the toilet about 5-6 times now, and pooped about 3 times.  I'm using the same method I used with Violet; I just hold him over the toilet during his diaper change.  I've also taken him in just after a feeding and had good luck that way too.  Unlike Violet, who screamed if you held her over the toilet (which is why we gave up until 3 months when she was more comfortable with it), Desmond is content to be held over the toilet, and looks up at me happily while we wait for nature to take its course.  We will see how he progresses, but so far I'm optimistic.

For more inforamation about EC, check out Diaper Free Baby or just do a search and see what appeals to you.

Child-Lead Potty Learning

When my daughter weaned, it was mostly a mutual choice, but not the child-lead situation I had anticipated.  At 18 months she was pulling on my shirt, throwing fits if I made her wait, and still wanting to nurse 5-10 times a day.  It wasn't a healthy relationship for either of us, and it had to come to a stop.  So I cut her back to 3 times a day, somehow, and after that I would only nurse her if she asked.  The more I kept her distracted, the less often she asked to nurse.  Eventually, we were just done, and after a week I refused when she asked again.  Of course, four months later she's trying to nurse every now and then, but I'm comfortable denying her now and she understands.

Still, part of me feels like we missed out on something that would empower her and make me feel like I wasn't pushing her.  Luckily, potty training has filled that void for me.  Of all the things that I have chosen to let her figure out on her own, I will admit that I didn't anticipate potty training being one of them.

Here's what we've been doing, and how it's been going:

0-3 months:  We began trying to look for "cues" that she had to go to the bathroom almost at birth.  We read about Elimination Communication, and found ourselves feeling frustrated and like failures.

3 months:  As much as we looked for cues and patterns, we finally found one- she started peeing every time we took off a dirty diaper.  So, we started holding her over the toilet at each diaper change.  Hazzah!  Success!  She still had wet diapers often, but she went in the potty each time as well, and seemed to save up her poops for when we took her to pee.

3-5 months:  We had less than a handful of poopy diapers during this time.  She began giving us a look when she had to poop, and seemed to really enjoy not sitting in her own waste.  Pees still happened both in the diaper and in the toilet.

5-21 months:  As she became mobile, letting us know she had to poop became less and less important.  We had a few poopy diapers here and there, but it was still less than once a week or even every two weeks.  Around 10 months she began pointing to her diaper when she needed to poop, and that helped.  Now that she is vocal, she will say, "poop."  We introduced a potty chair, which was okay, but she was still more comfortable with the toilet and a seat on it.  During this period of time, she peed on the floor approximately 1 billion times (it's laminate), but learned to get a towel and clean it up herself.

22 months:  She has begun taking off her own pants and diaper at times, so that she can sit on her potty chair and do her business.  She brings the little insert, and seems to enjoy the independence and privacy of using her potty chair by herself.  We went camping a few days ago and we learned that she would be potty trained if we lived exclusively outdoors (she would also probably be inconsolably happy if we lived exclusively outdoors, but until we find jobs in Hawaii this is not an option).  We were on a hike and didn't bring extra diapers, so we just took off her wet one and hoped for the best.  She watched me pull my pants down and squat to pee once and she was HOOKED.  She kept squatting down and and peeing and not getting any on her pants.  Then one time she walked off the trail a ways, and I found her squatting and pooping!  That's right, just like a dog does, she instinctively knew not to just poop in the middle of the trail!  We wiped with a leaf and moved on to more pees.  It was a great hike.  As soon as we were back in our cabin she immediately peed her pants.  You win some, you pee on some.

At this point, she's really impressed me with they way she has guided this change.  Yes, we support it and give positive feedback, but it seems her biggest factor in change is intrinsic motivation.

Who knows how much longer we have in diapers, or what will be the deciding factor to her making the crossover, but for now we're happy that we aren't forcing it and it's still happening easily and fluidly (like pee running down your leg).  We got You Can Go to the Potty by Dr. Sears and it really reinforces what we've already been doing without pressure or a timeline.  We have been reading that some and she seems to like it.  I feel like this is something that we've all found our way on together, without following any one program, and that's what I like best about Violet's potty learning, it's not something that some book or website had to teach us about, and not something that we had to teach her, it's something that has happened naturally by doing what we all feel makes sense and makes us each comfortable.

Does a bear **** in the woods? What about your baby?

People are always shocked to learn that my 7 month old uses the toilet, and has been since she was about 3 months old.

It's shocking to me too most days that a tiny little baby will choose, and I do mean choose, to go poop in the toilet. What's our secret? A motivated baby and a little extra work on our part.

When Violet was first born, our midwife talked to us about Elimination Communication (EC), or "Natural Infant Hygiene." She said that her grandson didn't ever need diapers, but that took a lot of dedication on her daughter's part. Basically, she said a good start was to hold the baby over the toilet when she first woke up. That was the time when baby was likely to need to pee, and that would get the baby used to peeing in the toilet.

It seemed simple enough, but our baby didn't really love being held over the toilet when she first woke up. We gave up pretty quickly. We were tired, cranky, and it seemed easier to just change the diaper and move on. Things changed when she started getting diaper rashes. The final suggestion that worked for us was to not use any wipe (not even the natural ones, not even a wash cloth). We would wash her in the sink with warm water and no soap after every diaper change. EVERY DIAPER CHANGE. To accommodate this, we moved the changing table into the bathroom. I think for us, this was the key to our success.

Suddenly, Violet associated the bathroom with pee, poop, and getting clean. Now I look back on those days of changing her diaper in her bedroom and wonder what she thought about that, or what she would think about it now. She almost immediately began peeing on the changing table every time we changed her diaper. As soon as the diaper came off, even a soaked one, she would pee. We figured, she's trying to tell us something. So, we started holding her over the toilet after taking off her diaper. The rest, as they say, is history.

She still wets at least 8 diapers a day, but she pees in the toilet almost as many times. When we started the diaper change/ hold over the toilet routine, she began pooping in the toilet right away. For the first month and a half we were doing this, she didn't poop in a single diaper. We have had poopy diapers since then, but it's usually only about two a week that I don't catch, and even those I usually realize she's pooping midway and take her to the toilet to finish. Part of that is that she is mobile, so she's playing and grunting and not always facing me, and I don't see her look. She seems to be getting more communicative though, because the other day she crawled over to me and looked at me very pointedly and made her poop face. She still hasn't copied the sign for poop that I show her when she goes.

Now she is also able to sit on a trainer seat (pictured above) and that's nice because it's rough on the back to hold the baby over the toilet. I do the hold where she has her back to my chest and I hold her by her thighs. We still use this when we are out, but she just uses her seat at home.

While I completely respect the purists out there, I think our partial use of the EC strategies us best for us. I'm glad we weren't overly dedicated in the beginning, because I think it would have upset Violet to be forced into it, and when it was directed by her actions it came effortlessly and happily. People ask me how I "make" my daughter use the toilet at such a young age, and I'm really glad that that is not the case. I'm not potty training my daughter, I'm allowing her the option to choose not to go to the bathroom in her pants. No one likes sitting in their own filth, and given the choice you'd be surprised how quickly even a small baby will choose the cleaner option.

I hope our story helps if you are trying EC/NIH or interested in trying, or if you are someone struggling because it's just not working for you. I would suggest giving it a break and coming back to it when you are both ready. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. It doesn't have to be every day. It can just be giving your child a choice or recognizing that face once in a while.