YAY!!!!!

ALAINA PEED IN THE POTTY TODAY!!!!! YAY!!! I'm not really even sure at this point how it happened; I was sleeping (it was 7:15 in the morning). Brice just brought her over to me and said, "Tell Mommy that you went pee in the toilet!" We all clapped and clapped and she was so happy! I really, really, REALLY hope this is the beginning of the end. I hope it clicked. It's been a really long time since she went in the potty and I'm hoping this will be the start of a trend. Wish us luck!

Full-time cloth diapers!

Yup, I'm doin' it. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law found a large set of cloth diapers at a garage sale for a great price (those things are pricey, even second hand!) and brought them to me last week. They are great for around the house, but they are REALLY bulky and Alaina kinda doesn't like that (which is a good thing, but I'll get to that) and they also don't fit under clothing at all. At least, not anything that fits the rest of petite little Alaina. I could dress her in 3T clothes, I guess, but I decided to take a different route. I decided (with Brice's input) that it would be worth the investment to buy some cloth diapers that were more fitted to use along with the giant stash we now have (between prefolds, homemade (which are the only ones that fit under clothes), hand-me-downs, and the new used garage sale set, we have a bundle) so that we could go at this full time and not just around the house on days when it's warm enough for Alaina to toddle around naked. So I shopped around (I love the Internet) and found a great deal on diapers.com. For less than what it would cost to buy a three month supply of the cheap disposables from WalMart, I got six gDiaper sets with cloth inserts (I told you they were expensive). I plan to convert a portion of our vast prefold collection into inserts and not buy anything else for diapering for Alaina EVER! Even if Alaina is potty trained in three months (which is a possibility), I will still feel justified for two reasons. Without the feedback of cloth diapering, potty trained in three months is much less of a reasonable goal. Second, we will have this set of cloth diapers for the next baby and won't have to spend money on disposables for him/her. If this goes well, I may buy some more of these cloth diapers in a smaller size to use before he/she is big enough for the set we now have.

The first time we tried to put one of the garage sale diapers in Alaina, she freaked out! I couldn't get within a mile of her with another diaper for 20 minutes. Since then, she fusses about half the time I try to diaper her in cloth! She'll tolerate the disposables, but the cloth kinds create a momentary uproar (once the diaper is on, she's over it). The good part of that is that it motivates me to let her run around diaper-free, which facilitates both her awareness and mine of when she needs to go. Even though her initial objection to cloth was due to the bulky kind of diaper, I think that she also associates the cloth with feeling wet because after she pees, she comes to me to tell me, whereas she doesn't tell me when she's wet a disposable. This was my main purpose with going to cloth full time. Until I got the new diapers in the mail yesterday, I was using just a prefold without a cover held on by one of those waist scrunchies I made a while back (I think I posted about those). Those are not bulky at all, but also not secure enough for regular use--I only use them when I'm keeping a close eye on things. But she still objected to those some of the time. She's fussed about the gDiapers once or twice, but she's mostly okay with them. She fussed when I tried to put a new one on after the first time she pooped in one.

Alaina poops in the bath A LOT! She hates it, I hate it, we all hate it, but I think it's actually a good thing. It means to me that she doesn't like to go in the diaper and that some awareness is still there. I usually put her in the bath to play and I sit on my bed to read or piddle around on the computer so I can hear everything going on but I don't have to sit on the floor of the bathroom. Today, I got my yoga ball and a book and sat in there with her because I could tell right at the beginning of her bath that she had to poop. She tooted and signed potty to me. So I sat there with her and any time I saw her straining to poop, I took her out of the bath and offered the potty. Mostly we just caught gas. But eventually she did get one tiny little piece of poop out. Not enough for me to do a full on happy dance, but she's trying! I watched her really close for the next hour or so hoping that the rest of the load would come, but it didn't. She got so tired I had to put her down for a nap and I knew she would poop then. I was right. She woke up poopy. Drat. Oh, well. We're getting closer! One step at a time.

Wow

My bad. Oops. Alaina was in the tub a little bit ago and she signed potty to me. I had just pulled off a poopy diaper before I put her in the tub so I figured that she had probably peed in the tub. But then a minute later, she was crying and fussing and when I went in to see why, she'd pooped in the tub! She really hates being in the tub with her poop, so maybe that motivated her to tell me she had to go preemptively. At any rate, I think I'll start putting her in the tub any time I know she has to go. Then maybe we can finally get a catch!

Then, just now she signed potty to me again and at the same time she tooted. I took her to go potty and her toot had been juicy. She didn't go, but she's doing better with signing! Yay!

Progress--slowly but surely

Alaina has been signing "potty" to me more and more. A couple of times it's been before she goes, but then she still won't go on the potty. Ten or fifteen minutes later, her diaper will be dirty. She also likes to sit on the potty, even if she won't use it. So we just need to put it all together. A couple of times lately, when I hold her over the potty, I can tell she's trying, but just doesn't have to go. So hopefully it won't be too much longer--we only have three more months until the baby is born! C'mon Alaina! You can do it!

A glimmer of hope

Well, I've been trying to take Alaina a little more often lately and I've actually been mostly working on getting her to sit on the potty by herself. She didn't like it at first since she was used to me holding her over it, but now she sits on it and claps for herself and says, "Yay!!" So that's some good progress. Being happy to sit on the potty is the first step.

Today I decided to give her some diaper-free time so she's been toddling around the room half-naked. She peed in her little rocking chair and immediately got up and looked at it like, "Hey, what?" and she was pretty upset when I took the cover off the chair to be washed. So that made me decide that I need to do more diaper free time with her so that she can see what's happening when she goes and relearn to associate the feeling with the result. Then later, she was in a diaper and started to poop. I interrupted her to try to get her to finish on the potty, but she wouldn't go. She's been naked ever since and still hasn't tried to finish. Weird kid.

But the thing that makes me kinda happy is that when she sits on the potty, she makes the peeing cue sound that I've used with her. So maybe there's still something there? She'll also sign "potty" when she hears the word or sometimes after she goes. So it seems like we have a lot of good foundations and now we just need one or two successes and I think it will click for her. I think if I could just catch her at the right time once or twice she'd go, "Oh! That's what you want me to do! Now I get it!" I think that the recognition for the need to go is still there to a degree and I'm hopeful that it would all come together quickly after she put together the objective.

At any rate, even if this project doesn't work with her, at least she's shown me that it CAN work if I'm diligent, especially at the right times. I guess that's why I want to try it again with the next baby even though this hasn't panned out quite as perfectly as I'd hoped. It's been such a more peaceful road for me than the regular thing.

I had a clever title for this post, but I forgot it

Well, baby pottying efforts have officially begun again. I went on hiatus for a while because the holiday season, Brice's crazy overloaded school semester, and morning sickness have been kicking my butt. But morning sickness is all but gone, the holidays and birthdays are over (for the moment), and Brice's schedule this semester is much more manageable. The trouble is, Alaina is not into it. No matter. We'll just keep offering "potty-tunities" (opportunities to go potty) until we get somewhere with it. I think our foundation is such that she'll jump right back into it when she's ready and in the meantime, I just have to remind her regularly that there is a better way than peeing and pooping all over herself. On the upside, she does occasionally sign "potty," though it's after the fact. And she's not asking to be changed because we have a different sign for that. So I know she's still somewhat aware, just resistant to actually going when the potty is offered. But between her newfound ability to sign and her heightened awareness of everything, I don't think it will be long. I think one or two coincidental catches will motivate her to work with me on this and we'll still potentially be on target for my 18-months-and-potty-trained goal. Which would be especially helpful since baby #4 is due right around that time. And, yes, I will be trying this all again with baby #4. Despite the long and arduous road, it's been ever so worth it (so far)!

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!?