Well, this is a little over due.  Been meaning to share about our EC journey, but between toilet training my toddler and racing to catch pees and poos with my 4.5m old (time is passing so fast!), this poor topic was neglected.

So how is it going with ECing our littlest one?  Great! We had a fantastic day today with all poops in the potty and a couple of dry diapers before a pee on the potty.

Some questions we’ve been getting:

How do I start?  I feel overwhelmed with “other” stuff! As a new parent, it’s easy to get hooked into the perfect parenting trap.  This is not black and white, it is very much a journey.  Pick your goals.  Instead of trying to catch all your baby’s pees and poops, try to set your sights on learning patterns.  This can be accomplished by setting aside 30-45 mintues a day to observe and learn from your baby.  Try mornings as this seems to be a higher pee frequency time.  Lay your baby out, diaper-less on an absorbent surface and watch what happens.  We love our wool puddle pad and a prefold diaper on top (waterproof + absorbent).  Baby legs help to keep little legs warm.  Your job is simply to baby watch and let yourself be present with your baby.  Watch their behaviour, and if they do a pee or a poo, make a sound to go with the behaviour.  You are helping them to associate the sound with the action.  We use “ssssss” for peeing and a grunt for pooping.  It feels a little funny at first to do it but hey, no one is watching!

Don’t worry if you feel like you can’t predict pees and poops.  This starting point is just to get you beginning to listen to your baby’s cues and behaviours and to have a place to practice with the sounds you’ll associate with the actions.

Now that we’ve been practicing for a while, here are some patterns that we’ve observed and some practical tidbits that have helped us:

1. Clare usually has to go if she nurses and pulls on and off and seems uncomfortable (or its a burp…)
2. She usually will go after nursing if she hasn’t fallen asleep
3. She usually will go after waking if I get to her immediately
4. She does do a little grunting noise before she goes, but I don’t always hear it
5. Some times it takes a little while for the pee/poop to come and other times it’s really quick – be patient and go with your intuition to know if she is done
6. I only do up the two outer snaps on her onesie so that I can pull it open quickly with the middle third one undone
7. I heart our diaper sprayer (back in stock shortly) for cleaning out the potty
8. a vinegar/water + lavendar essential oil spray is great for wiping the potty clean
9. a bio-soft liner in the bottom of the potty helps to lift out poops easily
10. have a cloth handy – we usually get spitups just prior to a pee or poop – guess it’s either the pushing or the whole digestive thing going on…!

Happy Pottying!

Let us know how you’re doing with EC and share your tips for other families getting started!

Woo hoo! Only a mom could be excited about this! Before our first daughter (now 26 months old) was born I learned about a practice called Elimination Communication where you could learn to read your baby’s cues to learn when they needed to eliminate, hold them over a potty and, voila, a pee and a poo (or one of them) into a potty and not a diaper.

Now this has got to be funny coming from someone who sells cloth diapers – telling you how to not use diapers. Well for us, EC was not a full time thing, but something that was a part of our lives and this practice went along really well with cloth diapering.

So here is to our cute little blue potty! It’s dusted off and back in use! And here is to the beginnings of a wonderful trusting relationship of communicating with our littlest one.

We’ll be back with more info about EC’ing your little one and our journey as it progresses.