Time for an EC Update!

Happy New Year! Hope you didn't party too hard! We rang in the new year at - get this - a baby party. We were invited by a couple whose baby was in the NICU with Oscar, when I ran into the mom at La Leche League a couple weeks ago. Kind of random, but we showed up anyways to a party full of couples with their babies. We didn't know anybody there, but it was fun! And I actually met someone else in real life who is doing EC with her baby. Isn't this a nice segue into an EC update?

December proved to be a uniquely challenging month of EC. We had freshly come back from a ten-day stay in NY, which was murder on EC training to begin with. Then, Oscar caught a minor stomach bug from Adam. And then he started teething. All mayhem broke loose with his little digestive system!

Suddenly, I wasn't catching his movements. We would actually go for days when I wouldn't catch anything at all. :-( I'd hold the little guy over the toilet, wait, and... nothing. So I'd put a diaper on him, and about three minutes later, he would do his business. It was really frustrating!

And then Adam surprised me. Usually, he lets me go my merry way with all my crazy ideas, and just kind of amusedly observes me. And he thought this idea was particularly hokey. However, a couple weeks into December, as I was pouring out my frustrations, he encouraged, "Just keep going through the motions. He'll get it."

Knock me over with a feather! He knows it works!

Fortunately, we got the ball rolling again. Here were three actions I found helpful:

1. Going through the motions. Just as Adam said. It really helped me keep momentum through the rough patch, instead of giving up entirely.

2. Going coverless. Leaving Oscar with just a fitted or a flat on helped me know exactly when he did his business, and from there I got a feel for his rhythm again.

3. Pottying at specific, predictable times. One easy way I helped ensure a catch was to take him to the toilet every time after he woke up, whether in the morning or after a nap. That, in my opinion, is the optimal time for success because baby wakes up with a full bladder.

So now we're pretty much back to how things were before all the craziness started. Baby D, you have pulled through once again!

EC Update

Well, for all my recent talk of diapers, you may have thought I threw in the towel, er, prefold with the Elimination Communication thing.

But we're still with it!

This is very much a part-time, whenever-I-think-about-it thing. I only catch about every other time he needs to go. And night-time and going out in public? Forget about it!

But I still consider this to be a very successful venture...

...Because ninety-five percent of the reason I'm doing this is because I dreeeeeeead toddler potty training, and every time Baby D uses the toilet, it's reinforcing the idea that it's totally okay to go somewhere other than his pants! The other five percent? I hate cleaning poopy diapers. So my goals are being accomplished!

Also, I'm starting to think that this should be called "Parent Potty Training", because Baby D totally knew his stuff right from the get-go. Even with my haphazard pottying schedule, he will go almost every time I put him on the pot, as if he's been holding it and waiting for the opportunity. I'm now convinced that babies have better bowel control than we give them credit for! The real training involved in this is me learning to read his cues. I would always wonder why he'd get inexplicable fussy bouts, until I learned to recognize some subtle differences with these bouts-- turns out, Baby D has a full-bladder fuss as well as a hungry fuss.


So here's what a typical EC episode looks like:

Baby D starts fussing. I know he's not hungry, but he's tensing his stomach muscles, grunting, and kicking around.


Me: Do you need to go POTTY? Mommy will take you POTTY. Let's go POTTY!

(I say "potty" a zillion times so that he'll know to hold it for just a few more minutes while I get his diaper off! I think he's making the connection, because sometimes when I say it, he instantly stops fussing, like he knows he'll get to go soon. What a smarty-pants!)

He is now adequately undressed and positioned over the toilet.


Me: Ssssss.... pssssss..... ssssss.... (that's the cue sound)


Adam (walking by the door): Uh oh, there's a couple snakes in the bathroom!!

Me: You hush. Ssssss.... pssssss...

After a minute or so, Baby D does his business.


Me: Good for you! You went POTTY!

Baby D: Goo!



So that's how everything's going on that front. It's pretty fun, but that's because I'm keeping my expectations reeeeeeally low. And what do you know, I'm pleasantly surprised how it's going! Well, both my guys are clamoring for me, so it's time to get off. Adios!

Okay, I'm officially a hippie now.

Adam's been telling me that for years, but now I have no choice but to agree on this one.

Shoot, I swore I'd never be one of those parents-- you know, the ones that blather on about their kid's potty habits and make you inwardly scream, "TMI! TMI!!!" But even hippies have to potty-train their kids. And you have to admit, a potty training one-month-old is a bit out of the ordinary. But I apologize for the TMI-ness, anyways.

So, I've been wildly interested in trying Elimination Communication, the art learning to recognize a baby's cues that it needs to eliminate, and respond by helping him use a receptacle other than a diaper. Babies, for the most part, are born with a dislike of sitting in their own waste. Hence why my little guy likes to spray every other time I take his diaper off (lucky me!). EC appeals to me because I don't see the logic in getting a baby used to ignoring that inborn dislike, and then trying to undo the damage later during the terrible two's or three's. Not to mention the decreased diapers! I'm all for that!

So Sunday night, I was like, "What the heck, let's give it a whirl!" and I put him in cloth diapers without covers so I'd know exactly when he went. From this, I was going to put together a rough idea of his elimination patterns. Supposedly, most babies have times that they'll predictably go: upon waking; 5, 10, 15 minutes into a feeding, etc. For other times, they will give cues: grunting, wiggling, staring off into space... It's all about learning your baby's individual cues and patterns.

Well, about 29854 wet diapers into it, I looked at the clock. It had only been a few hours! I'd had enough of pattern watching, and decided to try the real deal, since he had been dry for a little while. I held him over the bathroom sink, started making sssss pssss sounds.... and then he went!


This happened a few more times. I was absolutely floored by how little encouragement it took for him to do his business (although now that I think of it, is there ANY baby that needs encouragement to be a little poop machine?). I'm still working on learning his cues and figuring out a pattern, which is a little complicated since we've been going out quite a bit lately, and of course I need to put him back in diapers for that. Oy veh. But, of course, this is a skill that takes time to learn!

Today, I took a giant leap of faith and let him go diaperless. He's just lying on my lap with a prefold under his little baby butt, and so far, I haven't been a target, lol! Actually, while I was writing this, Baby D finished a feeding and started grunting. I've observed that he tends to have a bowel movement around feeding times, so I rushed him to the bathroom, and... sure enough, he had to go! Yay for us!!!

In short, this has been an activity that yields amazing results for so little time and effort invested so far. I'm hoping he's not lulling me into a false sense of security before he does something outrageous, the little stinker. I'll keep you posted on how it goes!

Here are some links about EC, in case you're interested:

http://www.diaperfreebaby.org
http://www.tribalbaby.org
EC YouTube video