A couple of really good days!

This past weekend I ran out of diapers. I thought, "Well, Alaina's been really responsive to my cues lately; maybe I should just force myself to go with cloth for a while." So I didn't but any. All day Saturday Alaina did great! She went pee every time I took her and she didn't pee in the diaper ONCE! She did poop in it twice though. But two messy diapers for an entire day is darn good! I also didn't feel like I was constantly taking her or super panicky either. I think she went every time I took her and I don't think I took her without her going more than two or three times. It was awesome! Her diaper in the night stayed dry all the way through to her early morning (around 2am I think?) nursing, but it was wet when she woke up in the morning. She kept her cloth diaper dry all morning Sunday and I found a lingering disposable for her to wear to church. The rest of the day she didn't wet or dirty her diaper! This is SO COOL!

Monday was a different story entirely. I couldn't catch a thing! I was busy with taking the kids to school (Raelin missed the bus--so you see what kind of a day we were off to) and doing something else that distracted me to the point of not taking Alaina potty in a timely fashion. I decided after changing a couple of poopy cloth diapers that I was just not into the idea of not having disposables when I wanted them. There are just days where Alaina's not into it and there are days when I'm not into it. And that needs to just be okay. So I bought some diapers. But I was certainly excited to see what it would take to really be good at this! I would really love to have a day or two a week where we just do cloth and lots of pottying investment. It's so worth it!

I can tell that Alaina is totally aware of her body's need to eliminate. Every time I take her, I can tell whether she has to go or not. If she has to go, she looks down at her crotch waiting for the pee or poop to come. But if she doesn't have to go, she looks around the room, plays with the faucet if I'm peeing her in the sink, or pulls the potty Tupperware out from under her. Clearly, anyone that says a child doesn't know they have to go before the age of 2 or that their sphincter muscles have to be mature to begin potty training (around the age of 2 also) has never seen a child that has been helped to maintain that awareness through baby pottying! Alaina's not even 1 year old and she totally knows if she needs to go or not and she is capable of holding it. I can tell because sometimes she goes the instant I hold her over the pot like she's just really got to go. But other times, she has to think about it and concentrate to get it out. Obviously, she has all kinds of control over it. It now baffles me that "experts" dismiss this diaper free idea as "mommy training" suitable only for helicopter parents. I don't even know Alaina's cues. I just offer her the potty from time to time when it seems like it's been a while. Alaina's the one who knows how to use her muscles to release her pee or poop when she's offered a more suitable place than a diaper. And she's very good at indicating when she doesn't have to go. Now all that's lacking is an actual word or sign from her to tell me she has to go. When she's consistently doing that, I'd say she's potty trained. Some would say that only when the child can go through the potty process alone they are potty trained. To me, if the child is the one initiating it, then they're potty trained. It's so funny to me how night and day these two forms of potty training are to me. I hate with every fiber of my being the Western way of potty training, but I love, love, love the diaper free way! SO much better than changing a two year old's butt! Or cleaning it up off the floor, play pen, walls, etc. as has been the case for me on more occasions than I care to count. (You see why I hate Western potty training!)

The other interesting thing that I've been noticing lately as Alaina's I-have-to-poop cues are disappearing from my radar is that she will only get out one little piece poop if she goes in a diaper. But if I catch her in time to take her to the potty, she drops a huge load! After getting out a little bit, it doesn't work to take her potty. The urgency has passed and she doesn't go. But if I catch her in time, it will be the only poop of the day. Otherwise, I end up changing 5-7 diapers with just a smidge of poop in them.

Another blessing of baby pottying is that Alaina is the first of my babies to not have constipation problems! And it isn't because she isn't prone to them. I've seen that she has the propensity for it. I'm certain that holding her in a healthier position as you do with EC is making all the difference. The only way to treat the other kids' constipation problems was to load them up with juice. I give Alaina a cup of juice maybe once every third week. Maybe. I'm not so good on the liquid thing. She's starting to let me know though. She fusses and then stares intently at my cup. Still, clearly her lack of constipation is not because I am vigilant about getting juice in her. Which I'm glad of because that's a lot of sugar for a baby. I chalk her healthier bowel movements up to baby pottying 100%.

All in all, I'd say our efforts with baby pottying have been a huge success and I look forward to the day when Alaina is younger than 2 years old and entirely potty trained as compared to my other kids whom we started potty training around the age of 2. How cool will that be!?

One change that I would make if I had this to do again would be to delay the start a bit. I don't think it made much of a difference to start as early as I did. Though, it was probably the only way to go for me because my tendency would have been to procrastinate because I was too busy, always planning to do it when things settled down (which they never would) and then we would be caught in the Western potty trap (now that sounds like a happy place to be, doesn't it? Ha!). Knowing what I know now (meaning that I know it's worth it and I know that it does work and therefore I'd be less inclined to procrastinate), I would start around the time the baby could sit up or 6 months, whichever came first. By that age, the baby is really going to respond to the positive reinforcement that comes in the form of an excited mommy or daddy and they have some muscle tone and are easier to hold. They're also still young enough not to be diaper trained yet, so you don't have to undo anything. However, a baby younger than this will still respond to cues, so it might be worth it for some to start younger. Also if I could easily read the baby's cues, I'd start younger. But since I can't read my baby's cues, I feel like the first 4 or maybe even 6 months were not really all that important. They weren't a waste of time by any means, since I learned a ton but I don't think that there were fundamental in us being successful with it. I think somewhere between 4 and 6 months things started to move along a little better. I personally would save myself the time investment from the first few months and invested more starting around 5 months with Alaina when she started sitting up. Though, if you remember, she went on potty strike right then, so maybe I'd have started a little earlier or a little later. But most babies don't learn to crawl and sit and cut teeth all at the same time. So maybe I should say closer to 6 months things started moving along better. It's hard to tell since it's been a gradual development. But even though I haven't met my diaper free by 9 months old goal (she's not signing very much yet), I'm happy with where we are and how things are going. It's nice to know that she'll go just about any time I take her and that if I want to invest the time (and she's amiable to it as well) then we can get through an entire day with very few misses! There's hope for diaper free well before 2 at least! I guess that's part of the reason I'd start later. If it really takes until she's 18 months or so to be potty trained, then I've invested a year and a half in this program. That's 6 months longer than the current average for Western potty training. I'd like the time investment to be the same, but with a lot less stress and A LOT less damage to the relationship. I also think that if the time investment were comparable either way you did it, more people would be willing to do the baby pottying way. So if I hadn't started until about 6 months and then she was potty trained by 18 months, the potty training investment would be a year just like Western potty training. I think Alaina can be potty trained before 18 months, but that's really going to depend on her temperament. Will she be the type that's willing to say "Mommy, potty" even though she's busy playing? Or will she prefer to just play, play, play and wet herself. I think that the more we use cloth, the more she'll be inclined to articulate her need to go. I noticed this weekend that she was very upset if she was left in a wet diaper (it only happened a couple of times, but she was super fussy (for Alaina) until I put her in a dry diaper. Especially if it was her super soggy morning diaper.

Okay, okay, I think that's enough for tonight. Brice is gone at school late tonight and I am out of sewing projects. Can you believe it!?