Nighttime EC - Jet lagged peeing!

[Liz Collins]

I have been practicing EC with my 4 month old from birth, including nights. His rhythm was to pee 2-3 times per night, pee LOTS in the morning, and gradually pee less frequently as the day wore on. We were in Italy for one month and when we returned home, we were all jet lagged as there is a 6 hour time difference between home and Italy. This meant that he was peeing like it was morning in the middle of the night, though he slept fairly well. We have been home for two weeks now and he's still peeing like crazy at night. I don't even hear him stir to pee, so I'm missing lots of them and getting pretty wet In addition, he gets upset when I try to pee him at night - I think it wakes him up and he protests and then pees as soon as I put him back in bed! (I use a bowl next to the bed to pee him, and he wears just a shirt in bed, so I'm not undressing him at all). I thought this would ease up as he got accustomed to the new time but so far, no change. Is there anything I can do to help shift his peeing pattern? Any suggestions for peeing him without upsetting him?

[seraf]

I think there is an age when they start to protest moving as much at night.

I have never been in your situation so my best guess is that I would stop offering for a few nights and see if he can get his schedule back to normal.  Your milk supply might still be on Italy time because supposedly it takes about 1 day per hour of time difference to re-adjust.  Huge amounts of milk in the night might be making him pee more.

Good luck.

[flyrabbitfly]

It can take little ones longer to adjust to time changes I think- their day/night rhythm is only getting established, or newly so. We live in S.Korea and DS is 2, and it still takes about 2 weeks to adjust when we come home from the US. So maybe you are right around the corner.

Also I agree with Seraf- maybe he wants to sleep through the night now! Some babies sleep better with nightime EC, and some would rather sleep through. Our DS flailed for hours if we didn't potty him at night so we all slept better with nighttime pottying, until he started teething: he was having such a rough time sleeping anyway that disturbing him for pottying was more than he could handle. So we backed off a bit, found an easy to potty or not nighttime dipe system (we used ECA pants with a bunch of liners) and played it by ear every night. It was probably 3 mo before he liked to be pottied regularly at night again.

Good luck:)