I sat down to type this post and was at a loss for where to start. Somehow in the past five weeks, Elimination Communication went from being this exciting and all-consuming adventure to just another part of our routine. I'm pretty sure that's a good sign, though!
Luckily I jotted down a few notes at the beginning, so I can recall in more detail how this has gone. (And actually, the first two days I kept meticulous notes, and if anyone's interested in that I'd be happy to post it.) Consider this fair warning: if you don't want to read the particulars of my baby's bowels, stop now!
Before we started
I had been trying to pay attention for a few weeks before, and made sure to say the cue ("Go pee-pee!") if she peed during a diaper change. By the time we were ready to start actually ECing, we had a pretty consistent diaper change routine: after each nursing, I would undo her dirty diaper but leave her on it and wait up to 10 minutes. Probably ¾ of the time she would pee, and I used our cue phrase. Then I’d wipe her and put a clean diaper on her. I would change her diaper frequently, at each nursing and usually once during the night, so she wasn't used to being too wet. Her poops were so irregular (and huge) that I decided not to worry about them to start.
I decided to begin at around 3 months. At this point we would be past the initial learning curve of breastfeeding and just parenthood in general, but before it was too late (some sources suggest there's a 6 month cut-off, after which EC is more difficult). By three months, Miriam would have better head control but not yet have hit big developmental milestones (which often distract from EC and result in more misses).
We actually ended up beginning EC at 2.5 months (11 weeks), because I was just so excited to get started! By then I had read two books on the topic and the third was on hold at the library. I had waterproof pads to protect the carpet. I had two shirts (as opposed to onsies) so she wouldn't be cold when she was diaperless. I had a Tupperware bowl strategically placed in the living room for when there wouldn't be time to make it to the bathroom. In short, I was raring and ready to go!
My goal was to try it for at least a month. I would do the first two days completely diaper free to learn her timing and patterns. I wouldn't bother doing it when outside of the house or at night. They say the best times to catch pees are immediately after waking up and during or after nursing. They also say babies tend to pee more in the morning than the afternoon. Armed with this knowledge, we began!
Day 1
Went incredibly well! She went without a diaper from 7:00 in the morning to 9:00 at night. During that time she peed 21 times. (I know, that sounds like a ton.) I "caught" it 13 times! We "missed" it but saw her going and so said the cue words twice. And we completely missed it six times. I was so excited about catching so many pees that I sang for joy throughout the day.
Day 2
Caught my first poop! She had just nursed and while I was holding her to pee, out came the poop! Hooray!
Reflections after the first week
It does take a lot of focus, but I think I’m doing good at staying relaxed. If I’m finding myself obsessing too much over it, I put her in a diaper and don’t worry about it for a while (usually until her next nap is over, as that’s a regular and easy catch).
Before we started this, Miriam was going up to 5 days between poops. While the doctor and everyone said that was fine and normal, I just didn’t like it. Now she poops almost every day, sometimes twice a day! Although she never looked unhappy to be sitting in a poopy diaper (on the contrary, she looked happy and quite relieved!), I really think she just didn’t like pooping in her diaper. I realize I’m taking that dangerous step from correlation to causation, but I do think she’s pooping more now because it’s not going into her diaper.
And have I mentioned she hasn’t pooped in a diaper AT ALL since we started this? General health and wellbeing aside, that alone is enough to keep me doing this!
Related to the above: I need to get her to poop in the toilet so I don’t have to clean the sink all the time!
Reflections after the second week
EC continues to go well… a little too well, actually. So well that we’re a bit nervous about things and my husband wants us to scale back. In fact, he asked me to take a day or two off. So I am and hopefully we’ll be able to get more balanced with it in the third week.
What “things” are we nervous about? There’s two. First, she’s pooping several times a day now, but it’s like she’s trying really hard to go even when she doesn’t have to. Like she thinks she really has to squeeze absolutely everything out. And we don’t like that.
The other thing might be unrelated, but we suspect it is related. For several nights now she’s been waking up and fussing multiple times (at say 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, and then we get up around 7:00). I know she’s not hungry, and she’s not even waking up completely. I was thinking it was because she needed to go to the bathroom, and contemplated trying EC at night (though I hadn’t wanted to originally because I wanted my sleep!). My husband is also pretty sure it’s because she’s not used to being in a wet diaper anymore and she just wants to be changed. (We used to be much better about making sure to change her at least once at night, but we’ve gotten so good at sleeping and feeding and going back to sleep that I really slacked off on this!) So we’re going to try to change her at least once and maybe twice a night and see if that doesn’t cut out the fussy half-waking.
She’s fine being diapered during the day, though. That could of course be because I change her very frequently, and will try to give her a “pottytunity” at times she usually goes (waking from naps and after nursing).
While I’m not going to continue going all out and really will scale back to just part-time ECing, I think at this point I could probably catch most of her pees during the day if I wanted to. (At least this is her routine right now – I know, babies change their routines as soon as you get used to them!) She goes as soon as she wakes up in the morning, then 15-20 minutes after that, then 15-20 minutes after that. She goes immediately after waking up from a nap. If it’s shortly before a nap, though, don’t bother trying. She almost never goes while nursing, but will go within 5 minutes after finishing. After that she can go every 25-30 minutes. I realize this sounds slightly intense, but it really has been kind of fun to try to figure it all out!
Reflections after 3.5 weeks
We did much less ECing this week, between the day or two off at the beginning and being out of the house for various other things. She pooped in her diaper a few times, and after having to clean that up, my husband said "Time to go back to EC!" I'm glad to have him on board - otherwise I wouldn't be doing this at all!
Reflections now
It still feels like we're on the go more, but I've been able to work in EC around that. I'll usually catch a pee after I take her out of the car seat if she was sleeping in the car. As I said at the beginning, EC is just part of our normal day now. As soon as Miriam wakes up, she poops. We let her go diaperless for a bit or carry her around with a prefold under her for about 15 minutes, when I take her to pee again. Repeat that and after her next pee I put her in a diaper for the day. She's basically in her diaper the rest of the day, but I take it off her to pee after she wakes up from a nap and sometimes after she nurses. At that rate, I'll catch 6-10 pees a day.
If we aren't out and about, I'll give her naked time on a blanket for a while. While we're on the floor like that, I'll grab the baby potty and see if she needs to go in it if it's been 20-30 minutes since she last went. She picked up very quickly (like within days) that when I hold her in this position, that's her cue to try to go to the bathroom, so I think one of the next steps will be branching out and trying to go in different places besides our bathroom sink or plastic bowl in the living room. We've successfully gone in the kitchen sink* and now I think I'd like to try going at other places and, once it's warm enough, outside.
This is not our baby.
But this is the position we hold her in (just with the legs a little lower).
We don't do EC "perfectly" and Miriam is not naked all the time - though she would be very happy if that was the case! I don't know her signs yet, and with us doing it "part-time" like this am not sure when I will pick up on them - I read in Bauer’s book that it will take anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months to learn your baby’s signals, so I'm not holding my breath on this! Right now we're happy at the rate we're going.
In some ways, EC has reminded me of breastfeeding. It takes so much concentration at the beginning, but after a while it just becomes second nature - though you still need to plan around it somewhat. I do think it's really good for our baby's health - though I'm certainly not saying this is for everyone! It's much easier to do if you're a SAHM, and if you only have one child to focus on. It will be interesting to see how this continues as Miriam becomes mobile - I hear that it can be a bit trickier then!
*If you ever come to my house, please don't be afraid to use our sinks. I promise I will have disinfected them before you arrived! And if I haven't, well, pee is sterile, so it's not that gross...