Nighttime EC with a newborn

[Adasmommy]

I've been ECing my 2 week old and we're both loving it. I can't quite imagine doing nighttime because all I want her to do is sleep (so I can, of course).

She seems to squirm in her sleep or wake up for a moment when she needs to pee, then drifts back to sleep. I've noticed this during the day and assume it's the same at night but A) I don't notice it because I'm asleep and B) I don't want to wake her any sooner than she's going to wake up anyway.

I've had her diapered and covered at night. I could use the wool sleepsack and have a snappi'd prefold underneath for faster/easier access . . . does that work well?

Any tips for doing nighttime EC without waking the baby up too much? If you've done nighttime, did it work well for you or what?

I guess I could EC if she wakes up dry, which she does sometime. Should I nurse first? We're all sharing a room with DH and I really don't want to wake him by infuriating a hungry baby!

Thanks for ANY nighttime EC ideas!

[accountclosed3]

when we did it, it would just wake him up no matter what.

so, we decided not to do it after a while.

i say this not to discourage you at all--a lot of mamas do it--but that i just needed to sleep and so did he.

[jprices08]

Well, Jaela is now 6 month old...(23rd June 09) & she's diaper free, also nighttimes!
I had her sleeping right next to me from the beginning on, when she moved, I held her over the pot, nursed her (sometimes she needed to, sometimes otherways around: first nursing,...), most of the time she just wanted to go back to sleep, she never really woke up... Today she sleeps all night long without peeing at all...
Yes, we've had & still have accidents.............!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Try it, see what's working best for yall!!!
Jennifer, mom of Jalen Elijah, 8, Jonah Amani, 5 & Jaela Mia Hannah 6 mo. .

[pixiepunk]

everyone has very different experiences with night time EC. to some extent you just have to try and see if/what works for you. and it's likely to change (and so much of parenting does) as baby grows and patterns change.

my experience is that i only night time EC'd my 3rd child. and she slept better at night than the other two, and in hindsight i wish i'd tried at night with the older two. i think she slept longer/better because when she did pee she was able to completely release her bladder, which kept it emptier for longer. she also didn't nurse as much as a result, thus didn't need to pee as much. but she also demanded to be night time EC'd - she'd literally kick me in the stomach when she had to pee so there was really no avoiding it. but she started often going all night w/out peeing when she was very little - like 2 months, and was consistently dry all night by probably 6 months or so. i haven't bothered to diaper her at night for a loooong time (she's now 20 months and has been an EC grad for a few months now). she also always fell asleep right after she peed. sometimes nursing, sometimes not. in fact sometimes she fell asleep *on* the little potty the second she finished peeing

we just kept a little potty and spare diapers bedside, and when she let me know she had to pee i'd take off her diaper and potty her. if i didn't wake up quickly enough to catch the pee, i just changed her. we kept a bucket by the bedside that i tossed the dirties into. in the winter i put a microfleece 'cozy' on the little potty so the plastic wasn't cold. i pissed her off a few times with a cold potty seat before i figured that trick out

i'd say try it - it'll either make your life easier or it will suck either way you'll probably feel strongly one way or the other. and if it sucks, don't worry about it. try it again sometime down the road if it feels like a good idea.

sleep is super important, in my case it helped bank us more sleep. but that's not the case for everyone, and you need to do what keeps everyone well-rested.

[Sheryl1678]

i'd say try it - it'll either make your life easier or it will suck either way you'll probably feel strongly one way or the other. and if it sucks, don't worry about it. try it again sometime down the road if it feels like a good idea.

I have gone back and forth with nighttime EC and right now she is back in diapers so I can sleep......

My first daughter would go easily on a BBLP that I kept on the nightstand and I could pretty much potty her in my sleep.

DD2 has insisted on the toilet in the bathroom since she was 8 mo old. To top it off she started only trickling (instead of a full release) so I was taking her every hour or two. NOOOO sleep for me for the last few months. Now I watch the clock and take her at midnight and 5am and that works a little bit.

[orangefoot]

Our dd slept next to me nakey-butt on a wool pad topped with a folded flat and a piece of fleece on top of that. If she woke up rooting around I sat up and offered her the breast while holding her tiny bum over an oval ice cream tub in case she wee'd. Most times she would wee and I emptied this container into a more sturdy container next to the bed.

If she ever woke and didn't seem to be rooting for a nipple in her mouth, just kicking her legs, I would hold her over the tub in the classic position and see what happened.

These two approaches weren't absolutely fool proof so if I missed a wee I dumped the flat over the edge of the bed onto a plastic bag on the floor and replaced it with another one.

Using flats underneath the babe is much easier and quicker to fix in the dark than changing a nappy IMO.

Although dd slept right next to me in bed we did have a co-sleeper where I kept a pile of flats ready folded, a spare wool pad, the oval tub and the other pot to collect the night's wee.

[pixiepunk]

our cosleeper was a night time EC/diaper station too!

[OperaDiva]

My co-sleeper is full of DS's unfolded laundry, my glasses, and my phone LOL. Good idea to set up an EC station though. We did get one dry night, but we really haven't tried to do nighttime EC unless he is just fussy and won't settle.

P.S. Laying a flat under probably only works for girls, boys pee UP, and I prefer not to shower in my sleep

[orangefoot]

Originally Posted by OperaDiva

P.S. Laying a flat under probably only works for girls, boys pee UP, and I prefer not to shower in my sleep

Indeed! I have two boys as well but didn't EC them. I was aware that it was easier to EC a girl in some ways but I think the advantage of being able to direct wee into a bottle with a boy may balance things out on the 'flat under the bum'

[Adasmommy]

Thanks for the advice! I've been peeing her on a prefold when she wakes up to nurse and we've had two nights in a row of no wet dipes. Well, wet dipes, but they were the ones I cued her onto, not ones attached to her!

Since I'm just peeing her when we nurse, I'm not losing any extra sleep. It's working well!

[orangefoot]

That's good news

[sgmom]

I have no advice to offer, but I did have some experience with it.

I started daytime EC with my daughter at 4.5 months old and without doing ANY nighttime EC, she was sleeping through the night and waking up dry from about 6-8 months old. I started doing EC (or I tried) from about 7.5 months on, but she HATED being pottied at night so I never worried about it. Not long after that, she started waking up wet. And today (at 15 months) she wakes up with a HEAVY diaper.

Sleep was more important to me, and I think it really depends on the kids...

[tbmum]

Elimination Communication at Night

Hi Adasmommy,

I've shared my EC at Night Tips at Tribal Baby.

I hope they help you to refine your technique, it sounds as if you are moving forward well.

Just remember to think of it as following your baby's needs in such a way that it is of calming benefit to you and your baby.

- Charndra

[julie grace]

I can certainly vouch for the tribal baby website. Worth looking at.

My DS wakes up during the night and needs feeding to resettle. So I get a few opportunities. I find that if he is dry at the start of the feed, he'll pee within a couple of minutes of feeding. So I have a bottle (adapted) to catch the pee. He cries if I try to catch the pee first before feeding. He always falls back to sleep at the end, so we all still get some sleep too. My catches vary, sometimes because I'm too slow.

What do people do for lighting? At the moment I have a dim lamp on all night so I can just see, without waking DH up.

[pixiepunk]

lighting... i used a head lamp on the red setting - enough to see by, but not bright to wake up baby, daddy or other two kids in the room, and left my hands free to do what i needed to do.

[EdnaMarie]

This is just what I did. I would not say that one thing works for everyone. But for me, unless baby was all the way awake, no way in heck was I going to wake that baby. Physically, they eventually stop peeing at night and whenever that happens, or whenever it gets to just one or two pees, that's when I'll take them to the potty. Not before. I'm sleep deprived enough as it is!

I'm glad you found something that's working for you.

[Harmony96]

Originally Posted by julie grace

What do people do for lighting? At the moment I have a dim lamp on all night so I can just see, without waking DH up.

I use my cell phone. Or I did back when he was waking at night.

[hakeber]

PixiePunk, when you say your two month old was starting to be dry all night, what constitutes all night for you? like midnight- 6am? Or 7pm- 7am, or what? Just curious about what to expect. DS slept through the night at 3 months (from 8pm - 9am), but he woke with a very wet nappy. I'm just wondering if it's highly unrealistic to imagine a 12+ hour sleep at 3 months without nappies.

I am trying to EC with DD (two weeks old now) but night time naked bums feel a little out of my league. When I nurse her at night I do try to do it over a wee bowl, as she seems to do a poo upon waking after 4-5 hours. But, she seems to pee much more frequently than I can catch, without staying up all night long. :

[gretchikin]

My DD2 is now 2 1/2 months and she WANTS to go in the middle of the night. We just made it part of the routine, wake up, pee, then eat. But actually she's been sleeping all night (like goes to sleep/last feeding usually at 9, 10, or 11 and sleeps til 6 or 7 or 8) for quite a while now. I'm waiting for the 3 month growth spurt to mess things up... lol! She refuses to be in a wet diaper and will throw a FIT when she wants to pee (usually.. there are those random no-sign times that baffle DH and me... like all the poop misses yesterday.. what in the wooorld?!?! after not having poo misses in forever that we couldn't remember having to change a poopy diaper...)

ok not sure if that helps... but I'd say pee first, that way they can nod off while nursing.

[gretchikin]

oh and my 2 month old will also be dry all night, like after 6 or 7 hours she'd be dry and have a huge pee. not ALL the time.. but it now doesn't really surprise me if she is