Elimination Communication

I had read about EC when pregnant and decided that, while I wanted to give it a try, that I was not the type of person this would work out very well for. And I was right.

We did it part time starting when Wally was maybe 4-5 months. I caught a few pees on the toilet. He has always had lots of nakey time. But then through the winter, we kind of put it aside.

But we’ve been getting more serious about EC in the past few months. And we’re having some success.

Intermittent success with pees. Wally knows when he’s going to pee, I know that. We are still working on communication about peeing - mostly, the only time pees go in the container are when I happen to be watching when he starts. But we HAVE had a few pees on cue into the potty.

But we’re doing great with poop. For a while, he would only poop standing up and any attempt to move him caused him great distress. I tried letting him poop in the shower, but no go. It just freaked him out. But he hates the shower anyway. Then a few times, he pooped into his potty but standing over it with me holding him. (He used to need me to hold him to poop.) Then he started squatting over the potty and standing up and sitting down and standing up and sitting down. Now he mostly will sit on his potty to poop. Sometimes he still stands up, but it’s usually because he’s forgotten that he was pooping and decided he wanted to get up and go somewhere else.

But the real success here is that he will communicate with me when he needs to poop. Twice now, we’ve been in the basement, and he came to get me, took my hand, led me to the stairs, and grunted and looked up the stairs. Both times with this special “I’m so proud of myself” look. He wanted me to take him upstairs to poop.

It’s still mostly relying on my intuition - which is pretty good, I’m surprised to say - and my catching his “poop face” seconds before he starts to poop.

But we haven’t had a poopy diaper since before his birthday on 4/15.