[Qalliope]

DD is 7 months now. I have been trying to catch pees off and on since she was born with NO success. The first thing she did when she got out of the womb was pee on me. She hates getting her diaper changed, hates wearing clothes of any kind, and her protests have reached a level where I finally feel that I want to dedicate myself to EC full time. I think she will be a much happier baby.

But she gives no signals of any kind that she is about to pee. No noises, gestures, butt lifting... She could be in my arms jabbering animatedly and not even pause, it just gets warm and wet while she's talking to me. She does not seem to like potties either. If I take her at regular intervals she just looks at me like I'm crazy and then gets upset if we linger too long. So I pick her up or let her play and then she pees within the next ten minutes or so. I thought I wasn't aware of her signals because I wasn't giving it my ongoing attention, but after several days of doing nothing but watching a naked baby butt, and mopping up puddles, it is not getting any easier.

Anybody got tips?

 

[sapphire_chan]

Waterproof pads and focus on poop?

Record the timing of all feeds and elimination and

: for a pattern?

 

[Carlyle]

Do you try immediately after she wakes up, and about 10 minutes after she eats/nurses/drinks? Those were good times for me. Sounds frustrating though. My dd wasn't a signaller either, but some form of timing worked for us.

 

[Qalliope]

Quote:

Waterproof pads and focus on poop?

That's mostly what I'm doing at home. My main motivation with wanting to move forward is the screaming/thrashing fits during changes away from home. If I can start to catch pees in the potty, hopefully that will mean fewer changes necessary. Also it would be nice to not be peed on multiple times per day.

Quote:

Do you try immediately after she wakes up, and about 10 minutes after she eats/nurses/drinks?

Watching her patterns has me completely stumped. I haven't tried actually writing it down. Maybe a pattern would emerge. But I swear she can pee every five to fifteen minutes over the course of an hour and then not at all for the next hour or two. She eats like that too. Lots of cluster feeding followed by a big gap. Also she doesn't seem to want to pee shortly after she eats. It's the other way around usually. I clean up a mess, or several, and then she wants to eat. She often goes straight into a nap then, so right when she wakes up might be good. I tend to put her in (or at least on top of) a diaper when she sleeps, so I think I'm missing the opportunity when she first wakes up.

Thanks for the tips. We'll get this figured out yet.

 

[lisavark]

Are you signaling to her when you see her go? Making a hissing sound or using a cue word or something? That might help you move toward getting her to go on cue.

I totally feel you with the non-signaling baby; mine is 13 months and *still* hardly ever signals. And we've EC'd full-time since two weeks old.

Are you noticing any patterns that change throughout the day? Most babies pee more often in the morning and less often in the afternoon. Is there any pattern to her poops--once a day, once every other day, three times a day...?

When my DD was seven months old, I think she averaged every fifteen minutes in the morning and every hour in the afternoon. Something like that. But she knew what my cue meant (a hissing sound) from really young, which made it easy to at least encourage her to go.

Seven months is kind of a hard time for EC'ing, I think, because they're starting to be mobile and interested in other things.

As far as the changing fits, what kind of diapers do you use? We use only cloth, and around that age was when I switched to *only* using diapers that fastened with snaps--no velcro. That makes it really easy to change her while she's sitting up on my lap. Give her a toy, set her on top of the diaper in my lap, and snap it on--no need to "fit" it like you do with a velcroed diaper, because I just know which snaps fit right. That's still the only way I change diapers, because lying down is just not okay with her.

You could also try pull-up training pants that absorb one pee. Make it easy to notice when she's going without actually getting peed on all the time, and she might not mind putting them on so much.

Good luck! EC is such an adventure...every time I start to get good at it, the rules change.

Just keep trying different things. Oh, I forgot to say that about potties, too: have you tried different places to pee? The adult toilet, a baby potty, the sink, the tub, outside in the yard, outside in a potted plant, a different spot in the yard...? When DD won't pee and I'm pretty sure she needs to go, I just keep trying different locations till eventually I find one she likes.

 

[pixiepunk]

i didn't start with DS till he was about 6 months old, and by then he wasn't signaling, so i relied entirely on timing. i watched him for a couple of days (prefold snappi'd with no cover) and jotted down every time he peed, poo'd, nursed and slept. from that i figured out things like he peed within 5 minutes of waking up, then again 30 minutes later, then again an hour later. then it was time for a nap... i got it to where i caught almost everything on days when i could pay enough attention to the clock. but he was in a diaper as back up all the time because if i was distracted by my DD1 and he was nudey i'd look over to a puddle on the floor and then exclaim "oh man is it 9:30 already?!"

your child's patterns might be less obvious (tied to when feedings and sleep occur, for example). but there should be some kind of pattern, you just need to figure out what it is.

 

[EdnaMarie]

Quote:

But I swear she can pee every five to fifteen minutes over the course of an hour

That is one long pee in my book. Have you tried running her hands under water to get her to pee if she hasn't in awhile?

Mine also had very few signals- and I did mostly timing and instinct. I also peed her AFTER she peed herself, every time. And I would cue her when she peed even if she was peeing on a mat.

Seven months is hard but eventually it will happen.

 

[sgmom]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Qalliope Watching her patterns has me completely stumped. I haven't tried actually writing it down. Maybe a pattern would emerge. But I swear she can pee every five to fifteen minutes over the course of an hour and then not at all for the next hour or two

My daughter (6.5 months) does exactly this. She also has NO signals for when she's about to let loose. I charted for weeks and found no pattern whatsoever, except that which I already knew (ie. after waking up).

Some days I get so discouraged that I want to give up and go back to disposables, but I have to keep reminding myself that we're setting her up for potty training later, by making her aware of her elimination and NOT by trying to potty train her now.

One thing I find that works is carrying her in a sling, wearing just a cloth diaper (no cover) and cueing her when she pees, and putting her on the potty after 20 or 30 minutes from her last pee (or when I think it's time she might need to go).

We've had HORRIBLE luck with cueing though (we started at 5 months), so we've pretty much stopped cueing her to go, but instead starting over and cueing her WHEN she goes to recreate the association (which is why wearing her helps), as well as signing potty and then putting her on the potty (even if we know she's done).

Poops are getting a bit easier, as she will very obviously grunt now if left to sit on the floor (on a flat diaper), but the pees are a nightmare. My child does exactly what yours does, so it's impossible to catch a sign that she's about to go, or for that matter, is going.

My advice is to chart for a few days and see if a pattern does emerge. If not, then I wish you all the luck you need... lord knows we need the same. haha People keep saying it will happen, so we're basically just living off hope here... lol