The Diaper-Free Baby_ The Natural Toilet Training Alternative - Christine Gross-Loh [34]
—EMILY, MOM TO OSCAR, 6 MONTHS
You’ve laid down a lot of foundations through EC’ing your newborn. You’ve learned to trust your instincts, to read your baby’s cues, and to figure out his patterns. Your baby’s also learned to trust that you are there to help respond to his needs. He’s been able to maintain the bodily awareness he was born with and he can make associations between your cues and his elimination. Now let’s move on to the next chapter in your journey, as you and your baby continue to enjoy and deepen the EC’ing relationship you’ve cultivated.
5.
EC’ing During Middle Infancy: Smooth Sailing
Your baby is no longer a newborn, and now you’re enjoying a new, precious stage as you parent your lovable, happy, responsive, and curious little baby. Many EC’ing families begin shortly before or just around this stage. For some of them, it’s taken this long to get settled as a newly expanded family after the birth. Others may not have discovered EC until now. In any case, it’s a great time to get started. Middle infancy—about three to eight months, or the period from when your child has more neck control to when he becomes mobile—really is an ideal time to practice elimination communication.
Whether you’re just starting out or have been following EC since your baby was born, there are characteristics about middle infancy that make EC go particularly smoothly during this period. Your baby is more aware of the world around her and is more responsive to you, so it’s easy for the two of you to get in tune with one another. She’s stronger and may even be able to sit up now, making positioning easier, but she’s not yet mobile, so she’s probably often nearby and not as distractible as she will be later on. Babies often fall into more predictable routines at this point as well, and their cues may become more obvious.
Remember the three tracks I mentioned in the first chapter: full-time EC, part-time EC, and occasional EC. These are just general guidelines to help you figure out which sections of this book are most helpful to you. They are not categories meant to pigeonhole you in any way. Naturally, I expect that you will probably shift back and forth between categories throughout the EC journey, even from day to day or week to week. The most important part of each and every track is that your goal be to simply tune in to your baby and listen to what she is telling you. It is not about having a baby who goes X number of times a day on a potty, or having a perfect track record, or getting your baby out of diapers before anyone else. Remember, elimination communication is first and foremost about communication!
For those of you who began practicing EC with your newborns, congratulations on making it to the next stage. You probably still have misses or don’t necessarily catch every pee, but you may be so aware of your baby’s patterns and signals that you’ve developed an intuitive sense for when your baby is likely to need to go to the bathroom, and it’s feeling more and more like a way of life for you. I think you’ll find this chapter useful in learning about the unique advantages and challenges of practicing EC in middle infancy.
STARTING OUT
Strategies and Cues
If you’re just starting out, you have a couple of options about how best to begin. An easy and helpful way to start is to take your baby’s diaper off for an hour or two. Spend a little time observing your baby, seeing if she signals, and cueing her (“psss!”) if she does go, so that she develops an association between cueing and going. Remember how I described how to cue, in chapter 4? If you catch your baby starting to pee or poop, make a sound or say a word that you’ve already chosen. (“Psss!” is a common one, or you can say “pee pee” or “tssss” or whatever comes naturally to you. If your baby is having a bowel movement,