will & t +1

Disclaimer: This post is about infant potty training. As such, “pee” and “poop” will be used in abundance. This may not be suitable for all audiences.

It’s time for the world to know: Mercedes goes pee and poop in her little red Baby Bjorn potty. She’s almost 6 months old; she’s been at it since 6 weeks.

Encouragement: Read the entire post, then judge. 

I wish I could say this idea was my own. But I can’t. It wasn’t. 

It all started one day in the Walker Library in Uptown Minneapolis. I was looking for books on childbirth, babies, being a mom…just trying to learn something about what in the world was going on inside me and what would eventually come out and what I would do about it (I was maybe 20 weeks pregnant). 

A book titled The Diaper Free Baby caught my eye, I grabbed it, read it in a day, and was talking with Will over dinner that night about how our baby wouldn’t wear diapers and would grow up knowing how to pee and poop on command.

It’s (this business of teaching your baby to go in the potty) called EC: Elimination Communication. No Josh, not “Evacuation Control.” Elimination Communication. 

The basic idea is this:

Babies have hunger cues.
Babies have sleep cues.
Babies have elimination cues.
Like us, babies don’t like to sit in their pee/poop. 
Babies like going pee and poop on the potty like us! 

So, what do you do? Well, you buy a little red potty from Target for $14, invite Brett and Kelina over, and hold your 6-week-old baby over the potty while making a “pssss” sound. And they will go pee. 

Well, maybe it won’t happen just like that, but that is what happened for us! We have witnesses. Mercedes went pee the first time I put her on the potty. 

What a gal. I was so proud. 

And since then it’s been a diaper-free, pee and poop “catching”, pssss and uuughhhh sounding household. Her bum was and is rash-free, I had months of not changing a single poopy diaper, and it’s fun.

It’s really fun! We both still smile every time she goes. 

And honestly, it’s not more work than changing diapers all the time. 

But wait, don’t babies go all the time? They just leak, right?

Wrong. 

Babies actually have (or so I read, and Mercedes certainly does) elimination patterns. For example, Mercedes usually goes pee right after I feed her, about 10 minutes later, and then right before I put her down for a nap. She goes poop, if at all, right after I feed her. 

Does she really have cues? 

Yes! She still gets squirmy and fussy right before she has to go. She’ll start grunting right before she has to go poop. And now she “shivers” right before she has to pee. I love knowing what she needs. I see it, then to the potty we go! I set her on it (it’s business time when her bum hits the plastic) and I cue her by making a pssss sound, or grunting if I think she has to poop. It’s silly, but totally awesome.

Hope for the future?

That someday soon, when she’s moving, she will see her red throne and start looking at it or moving toward it when she has to go. 

We didn’t have her red potty over Christmas break, but she still amazed her grandparents by going pee on the big potty. 

Want to do EC with your baby but are afraid of what people will think?

Don’t worry. There are actually EC support groups in many cities. No kidding! It’s not easy being the only parent on the block with a little red potty. People start asking questions when they see it. And hear you in the back room “communicating” with your daughter. Ha!