I, like most people I know, use diapers on my children. It is just easier for our lifestyle. Some people have never changed a diaper in their child's entire life. I change several a day. I learned about Elimination Communication a while back but wasn't ready to commit to that level of attentiveness.
So as the parent of 2, I have found myself in the dreaded "Potty Training Stage". You know that stage when your child starts showing an interest in learning how to use the potty. My oldest daughter, now almost 4, was fully trained by the age of 2. She started by wanting to sit on the potty, imitating others. So we made the decision to start training. As first time parents, I don't think we were quite ready for what we were getting ourselves into. We felt we should allow her to train herself. We didn't want to make demands. We wanted to make her feel successful.
We quickly learned that when any clothing below the waist was put on her, whether it was panties or pull-ups or cloth trainers, she would pee. We had to train naked. We kept her in a shirt and baby leg warmers. When accidents happened, she knew they were happening and she didn't like it. This is where the towels come in. We also quickly learned that accidents happen and we needed to be prepared or it could get messy. We started a stash of pee towels. We kept these towels in the entertainment center so we could get to them quickly. We would tell her to go sit on the potty and that pee-pee goes in the potty and not on the floor and she would finish going, on the potty.
She trained rather quickly until "the incident"occurred. You know those public restrooms that flush so loud it sounds like everything is going to be sucked down? Well, we encountered one of those. My daughter had been doing great, no accidents, even at night. I will never forget this day. She had asked to go to the bathroom so I took her along with her infant sister to the restroom. She started her business when the lady in the stall next to us flushed. My daughter flew off that toilet and peed on the floor. She was terrified.
The first few weeks after "the incident", she wouldn't use any potty so we went back to pull-ups full time. After a couple weeks, she finally started using the potty chair and one of our bathrooms at home. After another week or so, she started using all of our bathrooms at home. It took another week to get her to use her Grandparent's bathroom. She slowly made it back to where she had been before that dreaded day.
As my youngest daughter nears her second birthday, I find myself, again, at the crossroads of "Do we start training full time?". The second time around, I don't get to answer that question. My daughter answered it for me. Every morning she would yell for us because she peed on herself in her bed because she took off her diaper. Throughout the day, she would bring us her diaper. We put her to bed and would have to check on her within an hour because if we didn't she would fall asleep, you guessed it, without a diaper because she would take hers off and throw it on the floor. Then I would have to wake her up to change her and her bed when I would check on her before I went to bed.
So we pull out the potty chair and take off the diaper and amazingly, she goes. So, once again I find my life full of pee and towels. The question now is, how long will it take this time. I guess time will tell.
Follow my journey here on Connected Mom.
Michelle.
The Mom behind Mommy-cart.com.
When I first heard about the practice of Elimination Communication (an alternative practice to diapering in which the caregiver anticipates the infant or child's elimination needs and takes appropriate action to 'catch' the elimination.) I have to admit that my first reaction was far from open minded and accepting.
I am pretty crunchy, I thought to myself but I am not THAT crunchy.
Much of my first impressions were uninformed and admittedly motivated by my own natural aversion feelings towards elimination. The words ‘unsanitary’, ‘impossible’, and even ‘uncivilized’ (much to my embarrassment as I’d like to think I don’t make judgments like that) all came to mind and I immediately dismissed the idea as being far outside the realm of what was right for our family.
Fast forward to July 10, 2010; My 10 month old son, Oliver, has the worst diaper rash he has ever had; it is a big chapped festering rash that no frequency of diaper changes and no amount of Zinc Oxide or antibacterial/anti-fungal creams seem to be clearing. Oliver is fussy and irritable, and many of our favorite baby wearing and holding positions are uncomfortable for him, so in desperation I take a walk to my local pharmacist who tells me that air can sometimes help more than any over the counter diaper cream. For the next two days Oliver spends as much time as possible bare bottomed.
Not only did Oliver love ‘running free’ and his rash clear with amazing speed, but over those two days I began to notice two things.
1)Behaviors that I used to think were just funny run of the mill 10 month old idiosyncrasies were actually signs that he had to or was in the process of 'eliminating'.
2)That my son didn’t 'pee all the time’ or very frequently as I had imagined and come to believe, but rather a larger amount at a time with less frequency. In fact, somewhere around lunch of the second day I realized that Oliver’s elimination rhythms were eerily in time with my own.
I would come to find further encouragement, on websites like DiaperFreeBaby.org and TribalBaby.org, that I wasn’t imagining things.They confirmed my sudden suspicion that contrary to what our diaper culture would have me believe babies do have bladder and sphincter control and predictable elimination rhythms.
Both websites also assured me that it was possible to implement elimination communication (EC) on a part time or even casual basis; I did not have to make a full-time round the clock commitment to EC. This was awesome to hear, because committing to such a giant undertaking as being hyper-vigilant to my son’s excrement 24/7 sounded unpleasant and exhausting.
After two days nearly diaper free and the reading that I was doing, the prospect of implementing EC was beginning to sound a lot less ‘unsanitary’, ‘impossible’, and ‘uncivilized’. In fact, the thought of my son sitting around in his own excrement waiting to be changed was starting to sound a lot less sanitary and a lot less civilized, and the price of diapers and diapering supplies certainly feels impossible some months with our family living on only one income.
My EC research was also leading me towards the answers to future parenting problems that I had been nervous about. “Potty training” is a term, and idea that I am not entirely comfortable with as a) I despise the use of words like ‘training’ in relation to raising children, and b) it seems to me that much of the modern day potty training dogma relies heavily on coercion and reward systems that I feel are not entirely beneficial or effective. In short, I was having trouble finding a potty training program that would fit my “gentle parenting” style.¹ EC respects children and, as quoted from DiaperFreeBaby.org’s “75 Benefits of EC”:
“Reduces confusion about rules and creates consistency: rather than preventing a baby from entering a bathroom and then later requiring a toddler to use the bathroom, the bathroom is made a welcome and safe place from the very beginning.”
Where I had once dismissed EC as an unsanitary, impossible, uncivilized practice in which only the most radical of the crunchy moms partook (funny how my long ago definition of radical is sounding more like me every day), I was now starting to think that the practice (or at least a modified form of it) may just be perfect for my family.
So it was decided that Thursday July 15, 2010 would be our first day of EC. Our game plan was relatively simple; I would ‘offer the potty’ upon waking in the morning and from naps, as well as immediately following long nursing sessions. The rest of the day I would watch Oliver for signs that he needed to eliminate then ‘offer the potty’, and I would create an association sound (I chose to go with the traditional ‘Pssst’ sound) by making said sound every time I noticed him eliminating.
I also chose to keep an ‘elimination journal’ for the first few days or so. On none of the sites I researched did I find the suggestion to keep such a journal, but I found a journal to be a useful tool in the past. A journal helps me to recognize patterns that I may have otherwise missed.
Our first days were interesting to say the least. The awkwardness and small moments of frustration remind me very much of the early breastfeeding days when Oliver and I were both learning with and from each other. It is essentially the same thing (though perhaps in reverse). Oliver and I are learning a skill; while this new skill does not yet come naturally to us learning this skill is far from ‘unpleasant and exhausting’ as I once thought it would be. In fact, I feel like becoming even more in tune with Oliver’s moment to moment needs is having positive effects on our day to day activities, and our relationship over all.
In little over 10 days since implementing EC practices Iwas not expecting measurable results. We are late starters, and even if we had started EC in the early days of infancy it is still a gradual process. My aim is not to loose the diapers full time, or to be able to brag that my child ‘potty trained’ early, but to become more in tune with my child’s elimination needs so that our future full time transition from diaper to toilet is a smooth, natural, and gentle one.
¹ I have since learned that Elizabeth Pantley, author of “The No-Cry Sleep Solution”, which helped us very much in improving the amount and quality of our family’s sleep in a gentle way, has written a No-Cry potty training book.
Why do you (or do you not), practice elimination communication in your family? Do you have any tips for beginners or late starters to share? Is there anything you do with your children that you had originally dismissed in your pre-parenting days?
