The Diaper-Free Baby_ The Natural Toilet Training Alternative - Christine Gross-Loh [49]
This doesn’t mean all day long, though, nor does it mean resigning yourself to letting your baby pee all over the house! Consider the most appropriate way to do this so that it fits your family and lifestyle. If the weather is warm, you can just leave your baby diaperless whenever you’re outside. If you’re indoors most of the time and it’s not viable to have a diaper-free baby in the house, you can choose certain periods of the day to focus on EC and keep your baby diaperless only at those times. Before and after your baby has had a bath are times that work well, as do the periods before and after diaper changes. You may want to try out a diaper-free period for thirty minutes in the evening. You can always keep diaper-free time limited to a certain location in the house if you are concerned about a possible mess.
You may find that your baby does not initially eliminate without wearing a diaper. This is because he has been so conditioned to using the diaper as a toilet that he is waiting for you to put his diaper back on. This is actually a sign that he has the ability to control his bladder for at least a short period of time until he is in what he has learned is an “appropriate” situation to eliminate. Eventually, of course, he will have to eliminate, and making sure he has enough to drink can help ensure that he has the experience of being able to feel his own pee.
The same goes for bowel movements. Your baby probably displays more obvious cues when making a bowel movement than when he pees, so I’ve mostly concentrated on the latter here. Most parents, EC’ing or not, can tell when their baby is about to poop. But whether your baby is peeing or pooping, all your observations will provide crucial information about your baby’s patterns. Once you know these patterns, you can determine optimal times to try actually positioning your baby on the potty or toilet. For instance, it is very common for babies to pee after awakening or at a certain amount of time after eating or drinking. They may also go more often during the morning and less frequently during the afternoon.
If you have been using disposable diapers rather than going totally diaperless, you can now try putting your baby in cloth diapers (preferably without a cover) or in training pants. This is almost like a “bridge” between being fully diapered and going diaper-free, and it can be an optimal choice for both parent and child when first starting out in late infancy. Using cloth diapers or training pants so your baby can feel wetness (and you can tell when she’s peed) is really most crucial during this ramp-up learning stage; it doesn’t mean you will never be able to use disposables again. In fact, you can use cloth for just the hour or so a day that you’ve designated for EC and continue to keep your baby in disposables the rest of the time. Even for that one hour or so, being in cloth will provide your baby the opportunity to experience the feeling of wetness and to know when she has gone to the bathroom, unlike in a disposable.
If your child is already using cloth diapers most of the time, your next step would be to take the cover off if possible. The difference may not be as large to her—in fact, it will feel pretty much the same—but it will make a big difference for you. You will be able to tell right away that your baby is wet. This is really crucial for teaching you her patterns and for teaching her the next step, which is to make associations between your cues and the feeling of going to the bathroom.
Parents Speak About Awareness:
Hannah, who has been EC’ed from birth, is mostly in underwear but also wears pull-ups from time to time. When she’s in pull-ups, I’ve seen her tilt to one side and scoot and tilt again and scoot because she’s very conscious that she’s peed in one and is trying to get away from it. I’m so glad that she has enough consciousness of what she is doing that she tries to get away from the wetness!
—MELINDA, MOM TO SAMUEL, 3, AND HANNAH, 10 MONTHS
Making Associations
Your baby may act very surprised