Meredith still seems to really enjoy Fiona, though for this past week or so she’s been quite clingy to me. I feel like she’s going through a bit of a mourning period for the relationship we had (where she basically had me all to herself), and it makes me sad sometimes to think that we never will have quite that same relationship again. The last day or two though she seems to be back to more normal and she hasn’t ever seemed to hold any resentment towards Fiona at all, thankfully. She loves to tandem nurse, still likes to hold her, and will come and stroke Fiona’s head or hold her hand while Fiona is nursing or just lying and looking around. She likes to hold her hand in the car seat too. Luckily Fiona seems to be a pretty relaxed baby for the most part, and I’ve been trying to give Meredith lots of time with me to herself. We cuddle and nurse and play games while Fiona sleeps on Kris, and when Fiona wakes up she is quite happy to sit on the potty for a few minutes and then just relax and look around before she starts rooting. So we can give Meredith lots of warning that Fiona will need to nurse soon, and except for once or twice she’s been quite happy to stop whatever she’s doing with me when Fiona needs me. She often will stop and tell me “baby’s turn now, Mama” or “Mimi wait for baby to nurse”.

EC is going amazingly well. I don’t know if it’s because we started earlier (we started with Meredith at 3 weeks old), because Fiona has more clear signals, or because we’ve done it once before (or likely, a combination of all of the above), but we definitely have more “catches” than misses. She’s often in the same diaper all night long and there have been quite a few days where we’ve had her diaperless/coverless most of the day or she’s in the same diaper all day. Actually, the only thing really keeping us from having her diaperless more often are the little tiny squirts that babies do. We put a little piece of terry in her diapers so we don’t have to change the whole diaper each time, but that doesn’t work so well when diaperless. Those are getting less and less already though. She definitely seems to have some control already, and will often go as soon as we hold her over her little potty or the sink and signal.

She is still a great nurser, and was able to nurse side-lying from day one. Kris’ mom, who was out visiting for four days, told me she has one of the strongest sucks of any baby she’s ever known. (And she’s a foster parent, so she’s had a lot of babies in and out of her house.) I have to say though, that I love having a toddler around to nurse. It’s made things so much easier, since I have an overactive let down and oversupply. Meredith was constantly spitting up as a newborn (literally after every nurse in the beginning) and would choke and gag frequently while nursing. Now if I’m overly engorged or feel like my let down is too much, I can have Meredith nurse and take some pressure off. For an idea of how strong my letdown can be though, there have been times that Meredith has had to stop nursing or the letdown has caused her to choke a bit. Most of the time I am still really enjoying nursing Meredith too, though I have to be honest that there are times I wish I could sit down and relax for a minute without having someone attached to my breasts lol.

One unexpected thing is that Meredith seems to have night weaned, literally over night. The night I went into labour she didn’t wake up wanting to nurse even once. Not entirely unheard of, but definitely unusual. Since then, she’s been quite happy to fall asleep in Kris’ bed and normally if she wakes up in the night Kris will cuddle her into him and she’ll fall right back to sleep. Some nights she has asked to nurse, though so far if Fiona is nursing at the time she hasn’t had any problem waiting for Fiona to be done before having a turn herself. We haven’t ever told her she has to sleep on Kris’ side, or that she can’t nurse at night, or anything like that. I’m very careful that I don’t want her to feel like she’s been replaced by Fiona. I have been nursing her to sleep on Kris’ side, or if she falls asleep downstairs I’ll put her to bed on his side, but if she asked to come on my side I would certainly not tell her no. She is pretty flaily in her sleep so I wouldn’t want her next to Fiona, but prior to Fiona her and I often slept back to back anyway since I was so big and pregnant, so I would have no problem doing that. She’s only come into my side with me once since Fiona was born though. Maybe she likes having someone to really cuddle with, rather than being back to back? When I nurse her to sleep at night, if she comes off awake and wants to cuddle to sleep I have been lying with her longer than I did prior to Fiona being born and really trying to get lots of snuggling in before I sneak away.

The other night she asked to nurse to sleep in her bed in her room. It’s the second time she’s asked that. The first time was a few months ago and she still woke frequently in the night to nurse. If she had actually fallen asleep that time, I would have moved her into our bedroom once she was asleep. This time, I’m not entirely sure what I would have done. I think, considering she asked to lie there to nurse with no coercion on our part, that I would probably have left her there, with the monitor on, and if she had woken up in the night gone to her and brought her back to our room. It’s a bit bittersweet to think about though, she’s never not slept with one of us. She didn’t end up actually falling asleep in there either time though. There are no drapes in the room right now and a street light right outside the window so it’s very light in there even when it’s dark out. Not sure if that has something to do with it or not but I do need to get drapes in there.

Anyway, this has gotten long but I wanted to post somewhat of an update. I’ll try and post some pictures sometime in the next few days. Bed time for me now, both kids are sleeping and I should take advantage.

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We went to try and lay down, but though the contractions stayed quite far apart, they were suddenly quite intense again after my water breaking and so we didn’t actually sleep, but we dozed for an hour or so until Meredith woke up at 9 (she had slept the whole time until this point, straight through the night except for stirring once and was settled easily back to sleep by Kris!). We got up and the contractions started again almost immediately. Kris called the midwife to ask her if it was okay to use the same water that had been in the pool all night now that my water was broken, and she said it was fine. I was having a contraction while he was on the phone and she asked if she should come. I said something along the lines of “I don’t care, whatever you want” lol. Kris emptied the pool a bit so he could reheat the water, and meanwhile my contractions were quickly becoming more and more intense. I’m not sure when they started coming right on top of the other but it wasn’t long afterwards. I couldn’t believe how fast it went from every 8 minutes to transition. And it was very intense/painful. Meredith’s labour had been painful, but in a different way. Lots of back labour, but not nearly so intense. Probably because it was longer. I was very loud, way louder than with Meredith. I’m sure the neighbours heard lol.

Through this Meredith was standing by the pool feeding me frozen grapes (thanks to Paxye for this idea, they were the perfect labour food), stroking and kissing my head, and doing her own thing quietly. She apparently asked Kris to watch a movie at one point and he told her I didn’t want the TV on and she said “oh ok Daddy” and went and found something else to do.

I’m not sure what time it was when the midwife and her student showed up, but I was very close to pushing. The time was actually kind of perfect as Kris and I had had all night to do our own thing together, but when it got really intense and difficult for me (and just when he was wondering how he was going to do things like reheat the pool when I refused to let go of his hand), they showed up. The midwife listened to a few contractions and commented that it sounded like there was a little lip of cervix blocking the baby. I have no idea how she would know that from listening to me! Anyway, she asked if I wanted her to check and potentially hold it out of the way a bit. She did mention that she certainly didn’t have to and it would get out of the way on it’s own if she left it. I had originally told her I didn’t want to be checked at all, but at this point I was feeling like I wasn’t coping very well and I remembered how much I enjoyed pushing with Meredith. I asked her if she did that if it meant I would push sooner and she said yes, probably, and I was like “do it, I want to push!” (I also made her reassure me that she’d stop immediately if it hurt or I wanted her to, which of course she did.) It ended up making the next contraction better and there was a lip, that the head managed to slip past.

The contractions really slowed down at this point, but when they came they were intense. I was yelling very loudly with each one and saying things like “I don’t want to do this anymore”. I had made clear how much I was looking forward to pushing, but when the pushing started I hated it this time for some reason. I really enjoyed pushing with Meredith. Anyway, once I started feeling pushy there was no stopping me lol. I wanted her out of there. I only pushed for 9 minutes and then she burst into the world and Kris caught her and put her on my chest. Meredith came over to check her out and then climbed into the pool with us. We sat and rested for a few minutes and then checked and saw that Meredith had a little sister.

My only real regret about the whole thing is that the water had got cool in that last little bit and I’d been too out of it to remember to mention it and they hadn’t noticed. Her cord was a little short. It wouldn’t have been a problem if the water was nice and warm but because it was so cold I was having a hard time keeping her out of the water enough that we could wrap her. I also couldn’t easily have gotten out with the cord still attached. She was nice and pink and noisy when she first popped out but after about 10 minutes in the tub she had gotten quite quiet and was turning a bit blue. We tried to wrap her up on my chest but I just couldn’t keep her out of the cool water and agreed to cut the cord. I had wanted to wait until the placenta came out to cut it but it had been 15 minutes at this point so I agreed that I was okay cutting it a little sooner. Meredith ended up being the one to cut it, and we tied it off with a braided tie I had made (I had actually made two just in case and am wearing the other around my wrist now ).

They took her while I got out and decided to give her a little puff of room air, which worried me a bit seeing them put the little mask on her, but the midwife assured me it was mostly precaution and that she was just fine. She pinked up really quickly with the air and started squalling. Because I hadn’t pushed for long she was still a tad gurgly but nothing that concerned the midwives at all. I didn’t want the oxytocin shot, and at about a half hour after she was born my placenta hadn’t come out. I was lying on my back with Meredith nursing and holding the baby on the other arm, so she asked if I was willing to squat or change position to see if gravity would help the placenta out at all. I don’t think she was worried about it yet but wanted to be proactive. The placenta came out pretty quickly after I changed positions. Kris passed her back to me and she started rooting and latched on and nursed like a pro. I actually am amazed at how well she nurses; her latch is pretty much perfect already and she’s got a powerful little suck. I’m kind of glad I’m used to a toddler nursing already lol.

Meredith was fascinated by the placenta and the midwife showed her how it worked and how the cord attached to the baby (and where). About an hour after she was born they weighed and measured her. We all guessed how much she would weigh and everyone else was guessing under 7 pounds. I guessed 7lb 6oz. She ended up being 7lb 8oz so I was pretty close. (Maybe even right on if we had weighed her before she nursed. )The midwives left soon after that and Kris and I talked about names and settled on Fiona Siobhan pretty easily. We made our phone calls and have pretty much relaxed and just enjoyed our baby the rest of the day. Unlike Meredith’s labour, where I hadn’t slept in about 27 hours and so slept that whole day, I was feeling pretty good and only had a short nap in the afternoon when Kris and Meredith went out for some food.

We will be EC-ing with her as well, and we’ve already caught one pee and one of her meconium poops today, which is kind of neat.

I’ll post more pictures when I get a chance, but here’s one of Fiona. I was right when I had checked myself, she has tons of hair! It’s so strange to not be pregnant and that I have another little baby. Very surreal, but I’m loving it again. Meredith adores her right now and wants to hold her and touch her constantly. They were both nursing and looking in each other’s eyes while doing so, with Meredith’s hand stroking her head. I wish Kris had been around to get a picture. I hope Meredith continues to enjoy her so much as she realizes how much time and attention she will take up for a while.

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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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All of a sudden, just in the last two days, Meredith is using the potty almost 100% of the time, regardless of whether she has a diaper on or not, or whether we’re busy doing something else. The only accident she has had was while we were at the park. (She also hasn’t been dry over night, though she’s only peed once both nights.) She’s signalling very clearly; there is no second guessing whether she’s actually needing to pee or not. She’s also interrupting herself in the middle of activities to go find her potty and sit on it.

I would love to be done with diapers for now. Technically, for an EC’d child, I think she’s potty training a bit “late”, but considering how little effort it has been for us, it doesn’t bother me at all. Even though she’s still in diapers, we use far less diapers during the days than many families I know. And I’m betting she will be completely potty trained (at least during the day) before she’s two, at the rate she’s going.

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Meredith is 18 months old today, so I wanted to write a post all about her and what she’s been doing and saying recently. I realize for people who have never met us this may not be of much interest, it’s more for myself to look back on and for friends and family who live far away (Hi Alice!).

One of the questions we get asked a lot is how many words she is saying. My answer is, I have no idea. Do people actually count all their kid’s words? I thought of writing down all the words she says because it would be interesting to come back in a couple of years and see what she says, but I know I’d forget some. So, suffice it to say that she has been talking a lot recently. However, I am going to list a few of the ones she says a lot or I might like to remember about in the future.

My dad was here for a week and by the end of it she was calling him Grandad (“Ganda” or “Nanda” is how it sounded). She loves to say “no”, sometimes repeating it several times or else just saying it once very emphatically. She doesn’t say yes yet (though occasionally she’s said “yeah”) but she does nod her head. “More” is another favorite, and she’s started stringing that one together with other words, either spoken or signed. She said “more cookie” to me the other day when we were eating cookies, and often signs things like “more water”, “more food”, “more nurse”, etc. We got a fish tank at Christmas time, and she’s learned the sign for fish and loves to watch Finding Nemo. She will often bring me the controller and start signing fish and pointing to the TV even if we’re watching another movie at the time. We need to find other fish movies, Finding Nemo is getting old lol! She likes to yell our dog’s name while patting her leg, or yell “kitty!” for the cat, again while patting her leg.

She says “nigh nigh” now most nights when we’re heading to bed, and “love oo” (which melts my heart, of course). She started saying “sock” the other day, but it comes out sounding like “cock”, haha. One of her first words was “thank you”, which she mostly says when she gives things to someone, rather than the other way around. She also says “there it is” (most like one word though) when playing peek a boo with objects.

Her favorite toys right now are both wooden Plan toys. The Hammer Balls and the veggie set that has velcro veggies to cut apart. I’d love to get her the fruit one too. She also enjoys shape toys and any toy that involves putting rings on sticks. She has two dolls that she loves to cart around too. She loves to jump on beds and tables, stick stickers on things, and colour. A friend lives in our co-op who has a two-year-old boy and him and Meredith get along really well (most of the time, they are both two though!). They hug a lot, which is adorable, though other times the little boy doesn’t want to be touched. She loves to mimic him and often their games involve him doing things that she copies. They run around after each other and play peek-a-boo around his fish tank. It’s really sweet to watch them.

She loves to help out. If she sees me get out the broom she wants to hold the dustpan and is quite good at balancing it over to the garbage and dumping the contents out. She likes to help stir when we’re cooking and is very careful around hot things. She will take a scrubby and help wash dishes. She also likes to pick out socks. She can match colours, though not exact socks.

As far as EC goes, some days I think she will be potty trained in no time (like the other day when she went and got her potty with no prompting from me, sat in it, and pood and peed), but other days (most days) I realize we still have a ways to go. I’m okay with that though. She’s still young and we didn’t do EC for early potty training, we did it for self-awareness and communication. But it would be nice not to have to worry about diapers anymore.

She still only has seven teeth. The last time one popped through was at the beginning of November. I have friends with kids the same age who are getting molars already! She still nurses more than she eats solids, though she has been nursing less through the night. In fact, at night she often will pop off still partly awake and fall asleep on her own. Last night was the first time ever she fell asleep at night without either nursing or walking. I was lying down trying to nurse her, but she has a cold and was having a really hard time breathing while nursing and so she did nurse a little bit but ended up mostly giving up and just fell asleep on her own. She was also really tired though as she woke up from her nap after only 5 or 10 minutes and never did get back to sleep.

Of course, regardless of any of the above, we love her so much. She is such a little ham and so sweet. She definitely has a mind of her own and can be as stubborn as Kris or I, but I love that about her too. Part of me just wants to bottle her up as she is and never have her grow older, but in reality I am looking forward to watching her grow and learn and explore.

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Meredith has been enjoying helping to dress herself for a while now.  I kind of wish I’d taken more notice on when it started, not that it matters but I like to write things like that down in her baby book.  Probably before she turned a year, but getting so much more lately.  She will go and find her shoes and then hold them to her feet or hand them to me to help her put them on.  She lifts up her feet one at a time as I put them on.  She will bring me pants too, and will stand and lift her legs one at a time while I slip them on.  She also knows to put her arms through arm holes in shirts.  A couple of weeks ago, I started to put a shirt on her and she cried and pulled at it.  I took it off again, and she went and found a different shirt and handed it to me and quite happily let me put that one on.  She’s already picking out her own clothes!  She is showing some independence here too, as she sometimes doesn’t appreciate our help.  She spent about 20 minutes one morning with a pair of socks, examining them, finding the hole, trying to slip them on her feet.  She almost got one on, and I reached over to slip the last little edge around, and she yanked her foot and the sock away from me and started all over again.  Silly me!

She’s signalling more when she needs to go pee, but still definitely not consistently.  She wears the ecaPants we got around the house mostly now, but I still put her in diapers, or at least a wool cover/longies, when we go out.  However, she has learned a signal for when her diaper is wet, which is patting her hip, and is getting pretty consistent with that.  We just started patting our hips this past week when we asked her if she needed her diaper changed, and she’s caught on really quickly.  She obviously knows when her diaper is wet/dirty, so I’m hoping that will extend to her doing it before she needs to go too.

Speaking of signs, she made up her own sign.  I still haven’t quite figured out what it means.  At first I thought maybe it was her own sign for milk, even though she’s been using the ASL sign for it since she was about 6 months old.  But I think maybe it means “more” now.  Mostly she uses it when she’s nursing or wants to nurse, but she wants to play with the other breast while she’s nursing.  But she did do it once on the swing when I asked her if she wanted to swing some more.  What she does is tap her index finger into the open palm of her other hand.  I feel kind of bad that I don’t know exactly what she means by it, but I may never know.  At least I’m aware she has a sign that means she needs something, and can respond.  I’ve been trying to sign a lot to her.  We have a deaf cousin, so I’d like her to learn sign language at least enough to be able to communicate, since I’m close to my cousins and we see them a few times a year.  I’m trying to get Kris to learn some signs to do with her too, but I know it’s hard to remember to do them.  I think once she catches on, she will probably learn them pretty quickly.

Two signs she has learned in the past couple of weeks that she uses a lot now are shaking her head for no and nodding for yes.  I think though that sometimes she shakes her head no when she means yes still.  But it’s really handy to be able to ask her something and have her tell me for sure yes or no!  I think at first she shook her head (or bobbled it really) because she thought it was funny, but she caught on pretty quick that she could communicate by doing so too. 

She has discovered the park in our complex, and has fallen in love with it.  She will go get shoes/pants and then head to the door and stand waiting patiently (or not so patiently at times ) for us to get our own shoes on and follow her there.  Sometimes we go out the back way, and there is a forest behind our house with tons of blackberry bushes.  As we walk to the park, she wants to stop and pick blackberries.  Lately she doesn’t want us to pick one for her, she wants to do it herself.  She will grab on to one and squeeze as she pulls, which usually results in the berry bursting and purple juice flying everywhere.  I’m not sure any of us own clothes anymore that aren’t stained purple.

Another really cute thing she’s taken to doing lately is sitting on the bottom step.  She will take a sock, or a sippy cup, paper, a toy, really anything she’s semi-interested in, and toddle to the stairs, and plop herself down on the bottom one or the second from bottom.  And then just sit and play.  I think maybe they are the perfect height for her to sit comfortably right now?  I actually set up table and chairs that my mom had bought for her.  They say they’re for three and up, but I don’t listen well.  She can get up on the chairs herself but I think they’re still a little tall, but the chair itself is small enough that she sometimes finds it hard to get herself positioned comfortably.  The stairs are much shorter but there’s lots of room for her to sit.

We bought her crayons for her birthday.  At first they were just yummy food, but she will colour with them now.  She doesn’t have a ton of interest in them yet, but she’ll sit for a few minutes and scribble.  She also loves the little keyboard that used to be my grandfather’s (though she sits on it to play it) and the bigger keyboard that was my uncle’s (which she actually uses with her hands).  She will go to one or the other and point and yell until we turn it on for her.  I’m trying to show her how to do that herself, but she hasn’t quite caught on to the smaller one (it’s a sliding button), and the bigger one she can turn off but can’t quite push hard enough to get it on yet.  We have noticed since she was quite young that she seems very aware of music and seems to enjoy it.  She loves to dance and occasionally even sings a bit.  She seems to actually sing/dance with the beats for the most part too.

Lastly, she is teething big time.  Remember a couple of months ago when I said she’d cut a second tooth?  I lied.  That tooth came through a bit, but then disappeared.  I don’t know if the tooth actually goes backward, or if it stops coming and the gums end up growing back over, or what.  As a biologist (at heart at least), I really can’t quite wrap my brain around why that would happen physiologically, but anyway.  She had one tooth for a long time, then suddenly she has 5 teeth coming in.  That bottom one I thought was through is still coming through, and the four top front teeth.  The two on the sides at the top are the furthest through, with one having already cut through.  I’m thinking this amber teething necklace we got has to be doing something now, because though she’s had some very fussy nights/days, except for one instance none of them have been anything as intense as the first tooth coming through, and that was only one tooth.

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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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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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