I have a amazing story of success with EC...part-time EC at that!...and I thought my sharing might give others an extra bit of encouragement to keep up the wonderful work of keeping our children clean, dry, and in tune with their own bodies.
My husband and I found out about EC when ds was 8 weeks old, and we made a quick decision to convert over to cloth diapers and practice EC. Right away we were catching the first pee/poop of the morning and generally a few more throughout the day. We were amazed, and kept up the part-time EC until going full-time for a brief stint when Kaius was around 4 months old. We started catching most pees and poops, and I had high hopes that we'd be mostly accident-free by 12 months...I even purchased a few pairs of baby underwear! Somewhere around 6 months, ds began crawling and absolutely refused to pee or poop for us...everytime we offered, he screeched as though we were killing him, so we stopped EC for quite a while. Every now and then (maybe once a week) my husband would offer, but we rarely caught anything. Naturally, we all fell out of practice, and I had nearly written it off as just not worth the effort when the toddler poops in cloth diapers began to REALLY get to me.
I started offering pee opportunities whenever I had the chance, and slowly ds started to occasionally pee...he DID start to actively bring me clean diapers whenever he was wet, and I felt like he was becoming aware again of his bodily needs. At 15 months, we bought two Ikea potties, 6 more pairs of underwear, and spread fleece blankets out over our sheets. For two weeks, Kaius wore underwear only when in the house and it only took one or two misses before he would sit himself down on the potty or come to me saying 'pot' pot'...I think the extreme wetness against his skin of such thin underwear helped him make the final connection between staying dry and wetting himself. After these two weeks, I brought him into bed naked with a potty at the end of the bed and packed all our diapers away so that I wouldn't be tempted to use them when we went out. We have been accident free ever since.
Now, since he's only 16 months at this point, he can't pull down his pants on his own, and I still have to hold him over the potty or over the grass if we are out of the house. He does communicate with no and 'pot' pot' to let me know if he has to go, and I ask him often so that he himself wont forget to LET me know. I have had to grow VERY comfortable with peeing him behind a bush or tree as he ALWAYS seems to have to go in the most awkward of circumstances, but at this point, I just have to...
My diapers are packed up, and we've found that our pants have some new life in them without the bulk of a cloth diaper! It's amazing to think that a month ago, my husband and I were in the drug store pondering whether or not we ought to just switch back to disposable...!
My husband and I found out about EC when ds was 8 weeks old, and we made a quick decision to convert over to cloth diapers and practice EC. Right away we were catching the first pee/poop of the morning and generally a few more throughout the day. We were amazed, and kept up the part-time EC until going full-time for a brief stint when Kaius was around 4 months old. We started catching most pees and poops, and I had high hopes that we'd be mostly accident-free by 12 months...I even purchased a few pairs of baby underwear! Somewhere around 6 months, ds began crawling and absolutely refused to pee or poop for us...everytime we offered, he screeched as though we were killing him, so we stopped EC for quite a while. Every now and then (maybe once a week) my husband would offer, but we rarely caught anything. Naturally, we all fell out of practice, and I had nearly written it off as just not worth the effort when the toddler poops in cloth diapers began to REALLY get to me.
I started offering pee opportunities whenever I had the chance, and slowly ds started to occasionally pee...he DID start to actively bring me clean diapers whenever he was wet, and I felt like he was becoming aware again of his bodily needs. At 15 months, we bought two Ikea potties, 6 more pairs of underwear, and spread fleece blankets out over our sheets. For two weeks, Kaius wore underwear only when in the house and it only took one or two misses before he would sit himself down on the potty or come to me saying 'pot' pot'...I think the extreme wetness against his skin of such thin underwear helped him make the final connection between staying dry and wetting himself. After these two weeks, I brought him into bed naked with a potty at the end of the bed and packed all our diapers away so that I wouldn't be tempted to use them when we went out. We have been accident free ever since.
Now, since he's only 16 months at this point, he can't pull down his pants on his own, and I still have to hold him over the potty or over the grass if we are out of the house. He does communicate with no and 'pot' pot' to let me know if he has to go, and I ask him often so that he himself wont forget to LET me know. I have had to grow VERY comfortable with peeing him behind a bush or tree as he ALWAYS seems to have to go in the most awkward of circumstances, but at this point, I just have to...
My diapers are packed up, and we've found that our pants have some new life in them without the bulk of a cloth diaper! It's amazing to think that a month ago, my husband and I were in the drug store pondering whether or not we ought to just switch back to disposable...!
