I thought catching poops was supposed to be easy! EC'ing my 2 week old daughter...

[wombjuice]

Hi Mamas!  DH and I have been EC'ing our brand new daughter since a couple days after her birth (she was generally just naked for the first couple days).  We catch about 50% of her pees; we potty her every time she wakes up or if she gets fussy during nursing.  Almost every time we hold her over her potty, she pees.

Catching poops, however, is totally random and hardly ever happens.  She gets very, very grunty before pooping, but sometimes that gruntiness will last an hour or more before she finally poops...I can't hold her over a potty for that long!  For one, she doesn't like getting chilly (we dress her in a tiny t-shirt and a prefold without a cover), and two, eventually she just gets tired of us holding her over the potty and she starts screaming. 

Any advice for catching poops with a really young newborn?  Do the poop cues get more obvious?  And what's up with all the grunting?  DH said she sounds like a baby dragon!

[AliceMay]

Brand New!! I can't comment specifically because my DD pooped only once a week....so it was a bit different. But she would do a lot of pulling off the breast, on and off, and get obviously fussy (though poops were so rare I confess sometimes it took me a while to catch on).  Sounds like you are doing the right thing - and it seems good not to insist if she is getting cold/uncomfortable/unhappy, since (as I'm always reminding myself) the goal is primarily communication, not catches. 

I also found that after the first time I caught a poo, it seemed like DD got it (or she was thinking "you got it!" ;)) and that seemed to really help, and make catching poo more the norm. 

But I'm sure that whatever things are like in the first two weeks are likely to change! (hopefully it will be more obvious) Good luck!

[seraf]

We don't get grunting, we get the popping on and off the nipple. My kid has totally audible poops so it's easy to tell when he's starting and we can finish on the toilet. Otherwise I just try to give him a couple of minutes, but my guy is bigger.