A friend once told me she knew she was a real mom the day she started talking casually about her daughter’s bowel movements. I thought pushing a baby out was a pretty good sign too, but here I am talking about my daughter’s bathroom habits.
We EC with Meredith. To me, EC is basically recognizing that babies do know when they’re peeing or having a bowel movement, and can control it. By training a baby to go in diapers and ignore these sensations, they are losing this ability, making it harder to potty train them when they’re older. Meredith does wear diapers (or more recently training pants) most of the time, but we change her immediately when she’s wet and we watch for signals and use timing to learn when she might need to go and take her to the potty.
She’s been on a potty strike for about six weeks now though. She absolutely refuses to sit on it. So instead we take her outside, or to the toilet, and just hold her. It used to be that I “caught” 90% or more of her poos and maybe half her pees, and I was thrilled with that. I dislike poopy diapers. More recently that number has reversed, with far more pees caught and far fewer poos. Mostly because she won’t sit on the potty any more and hasn’t been signaling for poops. (It used to be that she would be happy sitting on the potty for 5 or 10 minutes if she needed to poop, but it’s hard to hold a baby squatting in arms for that long and she won’t tolerate it anyway.)
Overnight, I try to change her frequently, but it doesn’t always work out. Because we cosleep, I sometimes barely wake up while she nurses and fall back asleep before she’s done, so end up not changing her. Two nights ago though, I woke up enough to change her, and her diaper was dry. I held her over the potty we keep in the room (she wouldn’t sit on it even half asleep lol) and she had a big pee. I put the diaper back on her and back to sleep we went. In the morning the diaper was still dry and she had another big pee in the toilet. Last night though she was wet when I went to change her in the night and then wet again in the morning. But it is progress, and EC definitely seems to be a two steps forward, one step back kind of thing. We try not to have any expectations and there is no pressure on Meredith one way or the other. Mostly we just want her to be clean and dry as much as possible and not to learn to ignore her body’s signals and pee in her own clothes, whether or not those clothes are a diaper.
Even with the potty strike, we are having less and less wet diapers and she has started signaling at times. (She was one of those babies who never signaled!) This morning she crawled up to our patio door and started banging on it. She does that sometimes, and normally I just assume she wants to go play outside, but today I wondered if she actually needed to pee. Sure enough, she did pee. A little later the same thing happened.
My newest favorite EC item are our ecaPants. They make EC so easy and they come in cute prints and are super trim. They are absorbent enough to hold a pee without being bulky like a diaper, and the other day she had a poo blowout in nonwaterproof ecaPants and there was no leaking. Even better, Lisa, the owner, is a mother and is incredibly sweet and helpful. Honestly, some of the best customer service I’ve ever received. The shipping was a tad slow to Canada, but not because she sent it late so not something she can control. And no, I don’t get kickbacks from the company at all, I just love the trainers and wish her well.
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I never realized there was SO much to consider when “potty-training”. Hopefully she’ll get off potty strike soon!
Leif has never been much of a fan of the potty. I only use it to hold Leif over when a toilet isn’t available to catch a poop. It will be great for when he’s a bit older and more actively aware of when he needs to go.
Your talking about Meredith wanting to go outside to pee made me think of the time we lived in Parksville and Lily was constantly peeing outside on the back patio. At the time she was older than Meredith of course and could open the door herself so I guess we didn’t see her do it all the time. One day we went out there and it reeked and needed a spray down. A little pee here or there on the lawn is no big deal but on the patio or in the dog water dish was a bit ick.
Those ecapants sure look interesting!
Alice, you’d be amazed at how many different potty training techniques there are. Probably as many as there are familes.
Annie, That’s funny about Lily! haha. We hold Meredith over our lawn (or sometimes over our flower bed, since I read pee makes a great fertilizer too lol). We’ve been holding her more and more over the big toilet (or sitting her on it with our help) lately too and that seems to be going over well so far. We’ll have to make sure to encourage her not to pee on the patio when she’s older.