Â
I'm in week 6 of EC with my little guy (10 weeks old), and I just wanted to post a little thing to encourage anyone who is thinking about trying it, but still on the fence. My husband and I sat down together when the baby was 4 weeks old and reflected on how this whole parenthood gig was going so far. Overall, we were enjoying it, but we were SO SICK of diapers. I felt like I spent my whole day just changing, washing, drying, and folding diapers. Especially in the newborn phase, when they pee every 15 minutes...it's a lot of diapers. We had heard of EC--we knew one family that had successfully done it with their son, and I had read _Diaper Free_ during my pregnancy (interestingly, I read it while we were housebreaking our puppy--the methods are basically identical--look for signs, teach a cue, pay attention to timing, don't make a big deal out of "accidents"). We weren't sure about it--in those first few weeks of parenthood, there was just so much to learn, between breastfeeding and surviving on basically no sleep and dealing with my parents, who just would NOT GO HOME (first grandbaby on both sides...). EC seemed like too much to handle on top of all that. Well, at week 4, we decided that we didn't have anything to lose--except for some of our diaper laundry. So, I spent a few days with the baby just wearing a prefold (no cover). I kept a waterproof pad under him and commited to really paying attention to what he was doing. It only took a few hours before I figured out his sign--a particular kind of leg kicking (we had previously called this "the diaper dance"), and also what we call "nursing like a jerkface"--not settling down, popping on and off, biting. I showed my husband when he got home. After three days, we were SOLD on EC. We can't believe other people don't do this! He still wears a prefold and often a cover, but sometimes he'll wear the same prefold for 10 hours before we have a miss. We use a BBLP with a cozy that I made, or sometimes we hold him over the toilet (or sit double with him on a bigger toilet).Â
Â
Here are a few things EC has helped us with:
1) Mystery fusses. You know when your baby isn't wet, cold, or hungry, but he's just being a crankypants? Turns out, at least for our baby, nine times out of ten, he's working on a poop. Once that poop happens, he's ok again. We've discovered that, at night, he won't go to sleep until he's had his "big poop." Generally, he fusses wayyy less when we're doing consistent EC.
2) Figuring out food sensitivities. He's mostly a pretty happy baby, but we would have these nights when he would just scream and scream and all of us would be totally exhausted and crying before he finally went down. We would literally spend six hours trying to get the kid to sleep...but other nights he'd be just fine. EC helped us finally put it together. Besides screaming and being super wired, he was peeing literally every 10 minutes. I said, "It's like someone gave him a diuretic....oh crap, it's the coffee!" I don't drink coffee much--I don't make it for myself at home unless I have company. I was able to look back at the nights when he was a little changling baby and sure enough, they were all days when I had had coffee in the morning. Dr. Google says that babies shouldn't be sensitive to the caffeine in just one cup of coffee, but he definitely is. If he had just been filling a sposie, I would never have caught on.
3) Amazing our friends. Seriously. This might sound crazy, but I think the baby knows when there is a skeptic watching, because at those times, he goes IMMEDIATELY on cue and looks totally self-satisfied. My MIL about fell over when she saw this little baby use the potty. I think she thought that we basically just had him on the potty 24/7 and waited for something to happen.
4) Connecting with our baby. I know it's kind of a weird thing to connect over, but it feels so good to be able to see that he has a need and fill it, rather than just feeling helpless and saying, "I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU WANT."
5) LAUNDRY. Wow. I used to do diaper laundry literally every day. Now it's more like...every three days or so. And not always because I'm out of diapers, but because they're starting to smell.
Â
Caveats and warnings:
1) Here's the big one: at least in our case, when you teach your kid that there is a better way than sitting in his own poo, he won't want to go back. Even in situations where you JUST CAN'T get him to the bathroom (8 lanes of traffic on the DC beltway, anyone?). He will get REALLY MAD about this.
2) People will accuse you of abusing your child, or will ask if this will mess him up sexually as an adult. Know your research; be ready to respond. (short version: It's not EARLY pottying that is bad, it's COERCIVE pottying. And also, Freud was on enough cocaine to kill a small horse.). Anyone who actually witnesses you and your kid communicate and sees him pee on the potty shortly after you've placed him there will see that it's not mean. And, yes, it is "mom who is potty trained." Watch any parent trying to potty-train their two-year-old, and you'll see that they're doing the same thing--watching for "the potty dance," taking their kid to the potty, pulling the pants down. The difference is that those kids get a sticker on their bribe chart, and my poor little guy doesn't know what a sticker is.
Â
Tips and pointers:
1) Public bathrooms...oy. The normal kind, with a row of stalls, are the worst. There's just no where to set things down, undress the baby, potty him, put it all back together. Even in the ones with a changing table... you kind of leave your diaper stuff out there and carry a bare-butt baby back and forth from a stall. The looks you get are priceless. The best restrooms are either the one-seaters, where you have the whole room to yourself, or the kind with the fold-out changing table in the handicapped stall. Depending on the bathroom situation, sometimes I don't even try.
2) Little babies take a LONG time to poop. Sometimes they act like it is painful (maybe it is?). It's not the same as a refusal, though. You just have to be willing to sit there and wait a while and let him fuss. One night, my husband and I realized that we had planned out our whole Christmas gift list for all eleven brothers and sisters and in-laws while our son sat on his potty, tooting away. I was just about to give up when I finally heard the big poop. Pees usually are pretty quick--if he hasn't peed within 2 or 3 minutes of being on the potty, he doesn't need to. Poops, though, he can work on for up to 20 minutes. He rocks back and forth, jiggles his leg, and looks like he is concentrating REALLY HARD. Sometimes he fusses really intensely, but it gets worse if I interrupt him and take him off the potty. Unless I get a strong refusal (legs straight out AND an arched back), I let him work on it. Just make sure you're comfortable and have a good book or podcast or something.
3) He's only 2 months old...his signals aren't very clear all the time. Sometimes, it looks like he's signalling, when really, he's just wiggling or flailing. He doesn't have strong volitional movements yet, although that's getting better. I think it will get easier when he's older.
4) Get over your fear of getting peed on. Everyone has it. The sooner you conquer it, the easier it will be. Your clothes are washable. Baby pee is pretty innocuous.Â
5) Most people actually think it's pretty cool and amazing. I was shy about telling people about EC for the longest time, but most of the people I've told have said, "That's actually really smart. Wow."
6) This might depend on the baby, but our kid seems to signal a good while before it becomes an emergency. We can take our time getting him all undone and unsnapped and it's still fine. When he's bigger, I'll probably make him some split-crotch pants, but for right now, it's not a big deal.
7) If I make sure to offer him the potty at least twice when I get up to nurse him at night (once right when I get up, and once when we switch sides), he goes back to sleep with his bladder mostly empty and will stay down for 3 hours at a stretch. If I don't, he wakes me up again an hour later!
8) When you change a diaper, offer the potty. I know this sounds counterintuitive, since he just went, but haven't you had the experience of having to change three diapers in 20 minutes? Me too. EC can help!
9) If you're using a potty, make or buy a cozy. That little seat gets COLD!
Â
So that's all I wanted to say--just some words of encouragement. You just have to jump in and try it. Your baby will thank you.
 extremely helpful. We can avoid the public bathrooms by setting it up in the floor of the car or the back of the van.
