Babies change so quickly in a month’s time, but I don’t think much has changed EC-wise. At this point, the communication feels fairly one-sided, especially when it comes to pee: we give potty opportunities and cues and he [sometimes] responds.
Despite no diet change (still 100% breast milk), his poops are becoming more, um, interesting, providing extra incentive to get them in the potty rather than the diaper. His poop cues are fairly distinctive: farting, grunting, fussing while feeding. Unfortunately, these cues that sometimes mean, “I’m about to poop,” can alternately mean, “I have gas,” or, “I might poop sometime in the next 24 hours.”
In other news, I found a second potty on Craigslist for eight dollars — same brand as the blue pot, slightly different design. The blue pot now stays at daycare during the week, and I offer potty opportunities when I go over to feed The Dude. On the weekends, I just leave the pot in the car. If I slide the passenger seat all the way forward, I can place the pot on the floor behind it, and I’ve caught a couple of pees when we were out and about.
I’ll close this update by sharing a couple of things we’ve discovered on our EC journey.
Tips and Tricks:
- Sometimes The Dude needs a little help chilling out enough to pee. For awhile, letting him suck on a pacifier helped accomplish this. (It also gave me visions of him standing at a urinal in a public restroom when he’s twenty, casually pulling a pacifier out of his pocket before getting down to business.)
- More recently, the hairdryer is our calming tool of choice. We’d been using the dryer to calm him during diaper changes and make sure things stayed nice and dry down there. Matthew discovered that it also helped while on the pot!
- At daycare, in lieu of the hairdryer, I’ve sometimes resorted to running water in the sink.
- If you’re not quite “diaper-free” (and we definitely are NOT), something that’s easy-on and off, like a simple velcro cover with insert, makes potty opportunities more convenient.
Further reading
Diaper Free: FAQs and Facts — Good answers to common EC questions and concerns, written by a dad.
Elimination Communication — Tons of information in this two-year-and-counting chronicle of one family’s EC journey. While I try to avoid doing too many comparisons, I find it helpful to see where “Itty Bitty” was at various ages and what lies ahead for us. It also provides encouragement when I feel like just throwing in the diaper towel.
Her Green Life 
Love the modesty patch! 🙂
I know beyond nothing about potty seats, but I happened to see something on the local news that caught my eye. It was a warning about potty seats… and the seats look exactly like the one you have pictured here. Of course, I can’t find a link to a video or an article anywhere, but the warning was that this type of seat should only be used on the floor because there is some risk of it tipping over and some babies have fallen and been injured when the seat was placed up on a table.
Don’t know how meaningful that is, but I figured I’d pass it along! 🙂
Good to know. Sounds like kind-of a common sense thing, but some people have less of that than others 😉 Our potty is always on the floor at home. At daycare, I often set the pot on the changing table, which has a lip so it can’t just slide off, but I am also holding it (and him on it), the entire time.
Good for you at sticking with the EC! You are awesome! We had some incredible sleep challenges in the early days (heck, we still have them), so I back-burnered EC because I couldn’t handle any more failure. 🙂 But, now at 10 months I think we might be ready to try again.