I think one of the most annoying things about entering Ash into day care is that he’s no longer pooping on the potty, as he has been since he was five months old.
Elimination Communication has always been a big part of my belief system, something I learned about from Ashley and a few other moms when I was involved with BME, and Clive and I have been “ECing” with Ash since he was three months old. We did it “part time,” really only focusing on his pooping, never trying to catch pees regularly, outside of the ones immediately after he’d wake up (read: the easy ones). When he was really young, he’d sieze up when we’d put him on the potty, so when we’d see that he was pooping, we’d simply cue him (with a sing songy “poopoo”) and then when he was five months old he started pooping regularly on the potty. We’d change about one poopy diaper every couple of weeks, often when Ash was suffering from a food sensitivity or a change in schedule.
It was thrilling to be in tune with Ash’s elimination needs and to not just forfeit to diapers, to be able to recognize his signs that he need to poop and instead of watching him poop in his pants, to put him on the potty instead. It’s extremely simple and I’m often amazed that parents would CHOOSE to let their children go in a diaper, and clean them up immediately (or not), when little cleanup is necessary than your own bottoms when you poop in a toilet.
We would take our potty seat everywhere with us- to Georgia, to Cuba, to Ontario, to my parent’s house an hour away, and he would routinely go wherever we were.
That is, until I went back to work and he started day care. The past 18 months of ECing has basically gone down the toilet because he will now only poop in his diaper. Today, actually, was the first day that he pooped (started in his diaper, finished on the potty) at day care, 2.5 months after he first started being away from me. To say I’m disappointed is an understatement.
That being said, we keep him diaper free as much as we can while he’s at home with us, and he’s peeing SO much more than he ever has in his potty. It’s pretty awesome. I can often tell when he needs to pee either by my intuition (most frequently), or to a lesser extent when he starts getting angry for no reason and will often refuse to sit on his potty but immediately after pee on the floor, or sometimes he’ll tell me that he needs to pee and/or will sit on the potty himself.
I think we’re actually delving into real Potty Training at this point, as there’s no cuing anymore. We’ve had more “accidents” on the floor than ever, but even though I often feel like ECing was a bit of a waste, I’m thrilled that poopy diapers were very rare, and I think he’s more aware of his bodily functions than a lot of boys his age (as boys tend to potty train older than girls). I wish his babysitters and day care workers could have kept up with his potty habits better, but I understand that this is part of the deal. No one is more attentive than I am.
I love the idea that we could be pretty much out of diapers within the next couple of months. I’m tired of them. My bumGenius diapers are wearing out and I don’t feel like buying any more. Trainers are next! Oh, the exciting life of a parent!
