As I was packing my hospital bag a few weeks before my due date, I went down my list of items and stopped where I had written “baby potty” with a question mark beside it. I considered whether or not I should bring this unusual item to the hospital with me for the birth of my first child. I had read “Go Diaper Free” by Andrea Olsen, taken the accompanying courses, listened to many podcast episodes, and combed the internet for blog posts, videos, and discussions on Elimination Communication (EC). I already knew that I loved the idea of this respectful, gentle, non-coercive pottying from birth, but was this uncommon practice really going to work with my ACTUAL baby in REAL life?
Not knowing what childbirth and caring for a newborn would be like (but knowing enough to understand that it would probably be the most amazing and most difficult thing that I would ever do), I didn’t want to put any pressure on myself to accomplish anything other than meeting the basic needs of my baby and myself as we bonded and enjoyed his first days in the world.
At the last minute, I added the baby potty to my suitcase and zipped it up. I decided that, although EC would not be a top priority for me while in the hospital, if the practice really was as easy and natural as my research had claimed, and if I happened to have the energy, desire, and ability to pick up on my baby’s signals, I could try to catch the first meconium. No pressure. Nothing to lose.
On the morning of May 4th 2020, after almost 24 hours of labour ending in an emergency C-section, my son Felix was born. I was absolutely elated but also in really rough shape from the drugs and the surgery. Every time my midwife held my newborn to my cheek, I had to tell her to move him out of the way so I wouldn’t throw up on him. She tried to help me breastfeed but we couldn’t get him to latch and I had been given enough opiates to knock out an elephant, making it impossible for me to keep my eyes open. Eventually the drugs wore off and I stopped vomiting but I was still struggling to feed my tiny baby and I had never been so physically injured in my life. I felt like I had failed. I was absolutely in love with my son but I could not shake the feeling that I had failed him by not having the natural birth that I had planned and by not being able to feed him. At some point that afternoon, I was so overwhelmed and exhausted that I decided to take a nap. I handed the baby to my husband and closed my eyes.
I woke up a short while later to the most surprising sight. My husband was holding our hours-old baby over the top hat potty and he was passing his very first meconium – and then he peed! I asked my husband (who had gotten all of his information about EC second hand from me) how he had known the baby had to go. He said “well, the baby has not made a peep since he was born, and then he started grunting. I thought he might have to poop so I took off his diaper, held him over the potty, and there he goes!” I was amazed. And after feeling so down about how everything else was going, it gave me the boost of positivity that I needed. I couldn’t believe that this strange thing that wasn’t even on my radar at the time was working. It finally felt like something was going “right” and I was hooked from that day forward.
Fast forward 9 months – we are still practicing EC and loving it. The journey is ever-changing and the progress is not linear but I find it so rewarding and surprisingly fun! I started out slow, only offering the potty at diaper changes or when it was obvious that he was going to poop and gradually started doing it more and more throughout the day, at a pace that I felt was manageable, until I realized we were doing it full-time. At 6 months old, I read that a child was considered “potty-trained” if they had not gone in their diaper more than once in the past month. I thought about the past month and realized that my baby was definitely poop-potty-trained as his poops in the diaper were rare and had definitely only happened once or less in the past month. This is still true for us at 9 months old and it is so rewarding not to have to change poopy diapers anymore!
Our progress with pees has been more variable. There are periods of time when I feel like he’s really not that interested in peeing in the potty. And then there are days when his diaper stays dry for hours, through multiple naps, meals, and outings and I almost can’t believe how well the process is working. These ups and downs are typical for EC and I try to remind myself that the number of pees that make it into the potty is way less important than the immeasurable amount of learning that we are both experiencing.
It was at this point, when I realized that I had a poop-potty-trained 6-month-old, that I decided to start sharing my journey with others and offer to teach anyone who was interested in starting EC with their baby as well. I started the instagram account @theindependentinfant so that I could illustrate our journey with photos and videos to accompany my advice and discussions of EC. Shortly after, I began offering virtual consultations with personalized plans for starting a successful EC practice.
There are 3 key elements that I have found were essential for the success of my EC practice with my son: 1. Learning his signals, timing, and rhythms; 2. Creating associations; and 3. Offering potty opportunities.
The most important was learning his signals, timing, and rhythms. Most babies have a pretty obvious signal for when they are about to poop. For my baby, there is a lot of smelly gas for a few hours, and then grunting right before he is about to go. His signals for pee are not as predictable, consistent, or strong, but he will sometimes stop what he’s doing and give me this particular look like he wants something. Other times, he will fuss or yelp to tell me he has to go – but often this means it is urgent and by the time I take off his diaper, it is already wet. I have also learned his natural timing and rhythms. For example, he can pee as often as every 30 minutes in the morning, but can go up to a couple hours without having to pee in the afternoon and evening. Not surprisingly, the more he nurses, the more often he will pee. There doesn’t seem to be any relation between his pees/poos and eating solids, but there is for some babies. I also offer the potty at times when babies commonly need to go, like when waking up (this is almost a guaranteed pee for us), after getting out of the high chair/car seat/carrier, or during diaper changes. I use a combination of all of these plus my own intuition to know when he has to go.
Then, there is the creating of sound, word, or gesture associations. When the baby eliminates, you want to create an association with the process of eliminating for two reasons. 1. So that when you offer the potty, you can cue to encourage them to go. And 2. So that they can eventually use that sound/word/gesture to tell you that they have to go. From birth, we used the “psssss” sound for pee and a grunting noise for poo. From about 4 months old, we added in the ASL sign for toilet and the words “potty”, “pee-pee”, and “poo-poo”.
The third part combines the first two elements to come full circle. When I think the baby has to go, I offer the potty while using our association cues. For example, this afternoon when he woke up from his nap (a time when he almost always has to pee), I said “potty” and used the ASL sign for toilet, then carried him to the potty, sat him on it and said “pee-pee” while again using the sign. He peed, and I said “you pee-peed on the potty” and put his diaper back on.
Not having to change poopy diapers anymore is obviously great, but what I’ve found even more valuable is how EC has strengthened the connection between my baby and me. As a Speech and Language Pathologist, I love the communication aspect of EC most of all. I want to foster and encourage my baby’s communication skills in every way, including his communication of basic needs such as hunger, sleepiness, and elimination.
When I first heard about EC, I had never met anyone in real life who had done it, and I knew that it was going to seem very, very strange to most people. But what it’s taught me about parenting is that there are a million different ways to do things and just because everyone is doing things one way, and you’ve never even considered that there might be another way, doesn’t mean that this other way isn’t going to be the best way for you and your family. Be curious. Seek out information. Be open minded. You might just find that there is something that you’ve never even heard of that you’re going to absolutely love.
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