The other day, a friend of mine asked if we were going to do EC the same way with this baby, or if we planned to do a more “hardcore” version of it next time. The question made me stop and think. I joke that we do a lazy version of EC, but I think that’s because the criticisms we hear about EC are how much work it is and we never found it to be much more work than changing a diaper (and often found it to be less work), so therefore it must be a lazy version, right? We never recorded the exact times she peed vs when she ate or kept a notebook of her potty habits like I’ve read others do, but we did have a mental list of times she was likely to go: as a baby, something like shortly after nursing or waking up, every half hour or so in the morning, every hour or so in the afternoon, etc. So we would keep semi-track of the time and if we noticed it had been a while since we had last brought her, we would offer the potty. I wouldn’t set a timer and rush her to the potty when it went off; if I was reading an e-mail or a book, I’d take the couple of minutes to finish first. If she was signaling that she needed to go I’d take her sooner (though she rarely signaled, even while naked and with us watching, there were very few times we noticed any kind of change in her behaviour until she was older). Up until she started solids at 10 1/2 or 11 months, every poop ended up in the potty for a long time. Way easier than changing a poopy diaper!

That summer we left her naked most of the time and we seemed to be able to catch most pees. She was signaling more and things were going well. I thought she might be out of diapers completely around her first birthday. In the fall though, she had a bit of a potty strike. Not sure if it was because she had to be dressed more, or coincidence, but she didn’t like to sit on the potty and even when I got creative about where to take her often she would arch her back or refuse to go. She never completely refused to go, so we still got some “catches” every day. Around 17 or 18 months though she really started using the potty and signaling a lot more. We followed her lead a lot. When she was amenable to it, we would offer the potty anytime we noticed she hadn’t pee in a while. Sometimes she would seem to be getting a bit frustrated or she would actually hold the pee until we’d put a diaper back on her and then pee in the diaper, or on the (laminate) floor if she didn’t have a diaper on. We did talk to her at times about pee going in the potty or toilet, and we’d point out that we had to clean it up if she peed on the floor, but we tried not to make a big deal out of it or make it out to be “bad” or “good” either way. It would just be a “Oops, you peed on the floor. Let’s clean it up. If you let me know when you need to pee I can take you to the toilet.” (And unlike criticisms of EC I’ve read, we’ve never had constant puddles to clean up or anything like that lol.)

Then one day around mid-June, she just started using the potty, every single time. She uses it independently and doesn’t need help until she’s done. We never spent any time actually potty training her, it was pretty effortless. But she’s never lost that bodily awareness or the ability to hold it. (Even as a baby I’ve seen signs that she could hold her pee quite a bit longer than most people think.) She was older than a lot of EC’d kids I know, around 22 months, but we never did EC just for early potty training. There were so many other reasons: communication, so that she wouldn’t lose the body awareness, for environmental reasons, so that I’d have less diapers to clean… Even during times when she was going through potty strikes, the most diapers I had was 11 and I only did laundry every other day.

So I guess the short answer to the question, is probably not. I can’t really think of anything that I’d change if I were to do it over. Possibly leaving her naked more in the fall last year and using baby legs, but that’s about the only thing I can think of. We will likely do everything the same with the next baby, with the most important part being following the baby’s lead. We will plan to use timing and intuition mostly, but if the baby is a signaler then that would make things a little easier. We’ll offer the potty more at times when we know he or she tends to go more, and less at other times. If the baby goes through periods where he or she isn’t at all interested in the potty or doesn’t like to be offered, we’ll back off for a while and wait until she’s showing more interest again. I’ll start out offering at night when he or she wakes up, but again, if she starts really hating pottying at night then we’ll drop it for a while. Meredith has been dry at night the majority of the time since around 23 months, and that’s with very little nighttime EC in the last year or so.

I think things will go differently though, simply because we know more and we’re more aware ourselves. There were times when Meredith was fussy as a baby that we would nurse her or hold her or rock her, and then she’d have a big pee or poo and we would think “oh, of course!”. But as first time parents growing up in a society where we’re made to think babies aren’t aware of their own elimination needs, it was hard to get into the mindset where crying might mean the need to be pottied. I do wonder sometimes if the reason she fussed at time when needing to go when she was just a tiny baby but not so much (or at all) later, is because we missed enough signals that she just stopped bothering. I’ve heard a few parents say their second kid signaled more, but I wonder if that’s really true or if it’s just that once you have experience and have gotten into the mindset that a tiny baby might signal, you notice it more? Without going back in time, it’s impossible to say, but I am looking forward to doing it all over again one more time.

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One side effect of this whole potty training business is loss of sleep at night. Last night, she woke up several times in a row, took a long time to nurse back to sleep, was restless, and then would wake up again very shortly. I finally asked her if something was wrong, and she sat up and said “pee!” Oh. Of course.

For a long time she has hated having her diaper changed or being taken to potty at night. Hated it. I was one of those mothers who swore my child would never sit in a wet diaper for longer than a few minutes even if it meant getting up several times a night to change them. And I meant it. And for the first year? or so of her life, I stuck to it. She was often dry all night before she was a year old because I would take her potty whenever she woke up to nurse. But then she started screaming every time I tried to change her diaper or take her potty at night. Then once I had managed to change her, I would have to console her enough that she would settle and nurse, and then, because she’d woken herself up so much screaming, I’d have to nurse her for far longer than normal. And then I’d be way more awake from having had to go through all that. Trying to change her after she fell asleep was no good. It invariably woke her up and we’d have to go through all that anyway. So, I decided that obviously being in a wet diaper at night bothered me more than it bothered her. Since she never got rashes from wet diapers, we invested in really nice (but expensive) nighttime diapers to make her more comfortable, and we just don’t worry about nighttime pottying. (Well, unless she poops, but I can only think of one time that has happened in a very long time.)

But now it seems she has decided that she actually would prefer not to sit in a wet diaper at night. Fair enough. I wouldn’t want to either. I guess I’ll have to pay attention when she wakes up restless from now on. We used to have a potty in the bedroom, but that has been relegated to our backyard. I think it will need to go back in the bedroom so we’re not having to get up and go to the bathroom any time she needs to pee at night.

Funny, anti-EC’ers make comments about how much work EC is or how inconvenient it can be, and yet by all accounts we did a pretty lazy version of EC and she is potty trained before two with very little work on our part and literally no actual “potty training.” I’ve rarely had to rush her to the toilet, or stop what I’m doing to get her there. If she needs to go and can’t do it herself for some reason and I’m busy, I can ask her to wait and she will. Obviously I won’t make her wait longer than a minute or two right now, but I certainly don’t have to immediately drop what I’m doing either.

One of Kris’ conditions for getting pregnant again was for Meredith to be potty trained before the morning sickness hit. We didn’t think it was actually going to happen but obviously she knew better.

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For one thing, she has been dry through the night a lot recently.  She rarely wants to be pottied in the middle of the night, but she has had a few nights where she has gone 10 hours or more without pottying or wetting her diaper, even though she still wakes up throughout the night to nurse..  Other nights, she is wet the first time she wakes up, and I change her, and she’s still dry in the morning.  I have had a few nights where she’s cried and pushed me away when I’ve tried to put a new diaper on her so I’ve let her sleep naked, or with no cover.  So far, she’s never wet the bed in those cases.  Though I have to admit, if she’s dry when I check in the middle of the night and doesn’t want to potty, I always put a diaper on her, just in case.  She’s rarely needed it.  I’m definitely not ready to forego the diapers at the beginning of the night yet though.  She naps naked pretty much 100% of the time during the day, unless she happens to have a diaper on when she falls asleep, and I can’t remember the last time she’s had an accident during naps.

Funny enough, for us day time is a bit trickier.  Thinking about it, we’ve really only got 13 diapers (including the one or two we use at night), plus three pairs of ecaPants and a pair of training pants.  I do diaper laundry every other day, and usually have a few unused when I do laundry, so she’s going through 6 or 7 diapers or trainers a day including at night.  It seems like a lot to me.  I have 6 more pairs of ecaPants on the way and may purge my diapers even more when they come.  I could keep them and do laundry less often, but I don’t like the thought of dirty diapers sitting for more than two days.  I would really like a few of these too, but I think they’re going to have to wait until we’re in a better position financially.  Once we get those though, we could probably make do with just the ecaPants and trainers around the house and use the diapers just for going out.  (Though with her learning to walk, the diapers are great for cushioning her falls!)

I think the big stumbling block right now is us.  There have been so many times when she’s peed and one or both of us have thought, “Shoot, I just knew she had to pee and didn’t do anything about it.”  She didn’t signal for so long that we’ve really stopped looking for signals, even though she has some pretty clear indications at times.  Recently, she sometimes will cry or fuss when she has to go, which is also new.  She’s never really been a baby who fussed when she needed to pee, though sometimes she would cry after a big poo.  So again, if she’s fussing, pottying is not the first thing we think of trying.

Previous to her starting solids at around 10.5 months, she pooped in the potty about 90% of the time.  She’s only pooped once in the potty since then, which is too bad.  She went through a stage where she was eating a lot of solids, but she’s mostly eating breastmilk again now.  Even so, she hasn’t gone back to pooping in the potty (or toilet).

Today was a really good day for EC.  There were three or four times we recognized her signals and got her to a potty or toilet on time.  A couple of times we recognized the signals but she refused to go in the potty and ended up peeing in a diaper but at least we knew she was going to go.  Our intention with EC wasn’t to potty train early.  I know a few people who didn’t start potty training until 12-18 months whose kids were trained before age 2, so I don’t think EC is necessary for early potty learning.  But early potty learning that comes naturally with no coercion or pressure would be a great benefit.

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Second, the wedding was so much fun. I only wish the weekend could have been longer. Unfortunately, because it’s a bit of a drive, we really only had one full day there. We didn’t get there until 5pm Friday night and had to leave at 11am Sunday. But I loved seeing my family and my cousins. The wedding was a beautiful, outdoor ceremony and my cousin was stunning.

Meredith was friendly and social as usual. (I love that my mom thinks I’m making her antisocial by cosleeping, and yet comments constantly about how happy and friendly she is. Does she think it has absolutely nothing to do with my parenting? Or maybe she says differently about us behind my back?) She (Meredith, not my mom) did get a really bad diaper rash Saturday evening, and started acting clingy. Even though we changed her frequently, I think she’s not used to being in diapers that much, especially not the PUL (plastic) covers, since she’s generally coverless/diaperless at home and we use wool overnight. She got extremely fussy (very unusual for her), so we took her upstairs to our room. Her bum was super red and I touched it and she started to scream. We put some rash cream on it and I gave her a small dose of baby Motrin. I try to use it very sparingly (I think we’ve only used it once before, for teething), but stuck in a hotel in the mountains at 8 o’clock at night I didn’t feel we had a lot of other options besides just letting her be in pain. We also started just using the wool covers and not using the plastic ones. I had hesitated to use them because some of them are borrowed and she often has poo blowouts when we travel, but I do have some of my own this time so I used those. I imagine babies in disposables must be really uncomfortable with this heat if one day of plastic gave Meredith a diaper rash that bad. Anyway, the Motrin and nursing seemed to help, and we went back down to the reception just in time for the speeches.

Meredith has been taking steps for a while now, but just this past week she actually started walking. Now already, she prefers to walk rather than crawl. It seems like it happened overnight. She wants us to help her still though, even though she can walk on her own. (She even ran down the hallway last night!) So when we got down to the wedding again, she grabbed Kris’ fingers and pulled him around. He was trying to be discreet and just stay low and let her walk around the tables, but she decided to lead him onto the dance floor in the middle of my cousin’s speech (the bride). She stopped her speech to call out: “Meredith! I can’t believe you’re walking!” And then my aunt yelled “Kris! You and Meredith are not supposed to be the first dance.” (All in good fun. My aunt is like a second mom to me and adores Meredith.) She also made friends with another little girl there (who is three) and they crawled around together for a while. We got some really sweet pictures of them. Then I put her in the mei tei and she fell asleep, so we stuck around for part of the dancing. A testament to baby wearing for sure, since we didn’t have to leave when she got tired. Her diaper rash was mostly cleared up by the next day and it’s gone now.

Our next big thing is Meredith’s birthday in a week. Kris is taking the day off and we’re planning on taking the ferry over to one of the islands and spending the day either touring the islands, or just picking one island and staying there all day. We haven’t really decided yet, but it’s something we’ve discussed doing for several years and never done yet. I had also wanted to buy a tree and plant it in our yard for Meredith, but I’m not sure I want to do anything like that until we have our own house. We’re having a barbecue with friends the weekend after too. I didn’t want to go overboard for a first birthday, but I think doing our own family thing the day of and then having some friends for a barbecue at a nearby park on the weekend will be a lot of fun.

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