Potty training!

Well, this was the big P weekend - the daycare announced that they felt JJ was "ready" for potty training and I sort of agreed. I say "sort of" because I have absolutely no idea. I mean, you can't ever know for sure, and while his communication skills are outstanding for a 1.5 year old, they are still rather challenging from an adult perspective. But, if not this weekend, then the next opportunity wouldn't be until November so...onwards and pottywards!

We opted for the "nekkid kid" approach on Saturday, letting him roam free with naught on but a shirt and a smile. I think the poor little guy learned more about how "not to climb on things while naked" than anything else as he kept getting his dangle caught on things (OUCH!). And, it was a total disaster. I spent the whole day watching him like a hawk and we had maybe a 60% success rate. In fact, we've had better days when he was wearing a diaper than we had on Saturday! I was really discouraged. We had to run an errand in the evening, so we put underwear on him, and he wet himself twice while we were out. I went to bed sure that we had started too early and very discouraged.

On Sunday, we decided to start again with the nekkid kid approach, except this time John was home and could help. The morning was more of the same disaster - accidents all over the place and no apparent interest in getting to the potty. He went down for a nap around noon and when he woke up, we took him straight to the potty and celebrated the success. Then, we decided to say "Well, since you were dry through your whole nap (he always is, so no biggie really) and went potty so well when you woke up, would you like some "special" underwear?" We got out the Cars underwear with Mater on it and he was thrilled (he loves that movie). We told him that in order to wear these it was really important to keep Mater dry. And what do you know? It totally worked. He was dry for the next 7 hours!!! He went potty when prompted and we even went out to a late lunch, to Target for more underwear, and to Brahms for ice cream - all with NO accidents.

At bedtime, we put him in a diaper (we're still co-sleeping, and while he can make it through the night dry, whenever he wakes up with nightmares or night terrors, he tends to pee before we can get him to a potty), and were very encouraged by the whole thing.

Unsurprisingly, he had night terrors last night. I say unsurprisingly because whenever he has a significant change/learning event, it tends to trigger them.

This morning, we brought him to school (dry! hooray!) and let them know how it went. At lunch we had to go home and get more pants because he had 4 accidents in the morning. I'm interested to see how he did in the afternoon - it's got to be a huge adjustment from being able to go whenever you want without interrupting your activities to having to stop and go to a special room and sit down every time you need to go. It would be so much easier if they would practice the elimination communication we started with him full time at daycare. Oh well. Hopefully he'll improve during the week and we'll keep reinforcing at home. And, if it turns out that it's just too soon, well, that's ok too, and we'll just go back and try again later. Although, I swear, I think *I* stressed out way more over the whole thing than JJ did. I kept being certain I was doing something wrong. I think he just thought it was interesting that he got to be nekkid all day! LOL!

Got his own toilet!

Well, we finally got around to getting Mr. JJ his very own toilet.  This is especially good for Mommy who's back has been KILLING her trying to dangle his fast growing tuckus over the toilet.  Now he can rest in splendid comfort on a cushy seat to do the deed.  Ah JJ, such a big boy you are!

Update on EC

The increase in milk/formula volume has made it a bit more tricky to catch all the pee events, but it's made it way easier to catch the poos. And boy are we getting good at it! He's consistently using the toilet for poops every time! And it seems like he's actually holding it which is TOTALLY amazing. When we take him to the potty, he will wait until he's in position before he pees or poos. And, if he doesn't really need to go, he'll still try to squeeze out a few drops. What an amazing kid!

And yet another poop record - 10 days

Yikes! Thankfully, we caught it in the toilet (hooray for EC!!) so no messy cleanup. 10 days...that is one super efficient colon this kid has got!

EC - the update

So, you're never going to believe this (or maybe you will). We have been *really* successful with the whole EC thing! Today, JJ only used 1 diaper all day long - he would indicate he needed to go and I would take him over to the toilet, take off his diaper and voila! he would pee in the toilet, even at the restauraunt! I am totally amazed that this worked. We've been working on it for about 2 weeks and I'm really impressed that it works so well.


If you want to try this yourself (they say it works best if you start before the baby is 6 months), here are some tips for you:

1) Check out diaperfreebaby.org and/or read one of the EC books out there (I read Infant Potty Basics: With or Without Diapers-- The Natural Way by Laurie Boucke but there are lots of books ou there) I'm so new at this - I'm sure there are lots of things I'm doing wrong.

2) It took me 2 days to start being successful a little and 2 weeks to be successful a lot. They reccommend having a diaper free day where the baby hangs out on a waterproof pad nekkid you can observe what he/she does just before a pee or poo. I think this would work well, but I didn't do it(no time) - I relied on knowing when he'd had accidents before and trying to watch for signs. As a result, I had a lot of changing table accidents during the first 2 days. (never got me wet, but I had to change the pad cover rather a lot) I give him an "op-pee-tunity" every time his diaper would normally come off (after waking, after eating, before bath, etc.)

3)Plot out how you're going to hold him and what your key word is going to be ahead of time. I hook my fingers under his knees so he can sit with his back leaned up against my chest and all his business bits dangling down. We use "would you like to pee? pss,pss,pss" as his cue. I was inconsistent at first and so it probably confused JJ a bit.

4)It's more about training you than training the baby. It's made me a lot more observant. Plan on feeling a little silly and having times where baby just doesn't need to go cuz you guessed wrong.

5) If you use diapers to back you up (I do - I'm not confident enough to go without yet), use All-In-One cloth diapers if you can. They are easier to get on/off frequently. Disposables get all stretched.

Elimination communication

Diaper free, natural infant hygene - whatever you want to call it. EC, elimination communication, is a fancy phrase that means "paying attention to when your baby needs to go so you can park them on a toilet rather than letting them sit in a wet/poopy diaper." There's whole books and support groups for this - which is really kind of odd when you think about it. Sort of like having an advisor to tell you how to breastfeed (see previous rant on breastfeeding). I mean, half the world manages to do without nappies most of the time and they're not swimming in baby poo. So, we decided to try this - it's supposed to help the child potty train sooner and of course it cuts down on the number of diapers you use, both of which seems like a good thing for the baby (and for the parents).

Boy let me tell you, it's trickier than it sounds (just like breastfeeding ;) )!

So what you do is observe your child and see what they do just before they pee/poo. Then when you see them do that again, you whisk them over an appropriate recepticle (toilet, bowl, sink, etc.) and give them a cue word to let them associate with the act of elimination (like "pee" or "poo"). Eventually, they associate the word with it being ok to let loose, and you are home free, diaperwise. Sounds cool in theory, right? Well, there's a reason they have support groups for this kind of thing. I've been "observing" JJ for signals and as far as I can tell, he'll occasionally stare off into space if he's peeing...but sometimes he does that when he's tired or gassy or sees something interesting over my shoulder. I've talked to him about being more consistent in his cues, but he just gives me that great big gummy smile and laughs as if to say "yeah, right lady! you think I'm going to make this *easy* on ya?"

In spite of all this, we had our first successful "pee" yesterday and first poo today - I was changing his diaper and thought, hey that looks like that mile long stare he gets just before he pees all over me...So, I held him over the toilet and voila! he peed into the toilet. Cool! And this morning I was giving him an "op-poo-tunity" at the toilet and sure enough he pooed. It'll probably never happen again, but it was very encouraging to have it work this once! Hooray!