My DD is just coming up to 11 months (ECed from 10 weeks).

We have had or ups and downs but I swear we are very slowly going backwards. Before she could crawl, we had all poos and 90% of wees in the potty, the 10% miss rate down to me being slow to pick up on her signals/too busy.

After I had been in hospital recently I had to work hard at getting back in sync with my DD which we did for all poos and some wees (maybe 25%) and I thought I had found the right place to potty, i.e. The big toilet and that we were communicating more.

But since she has started walking and talking more, we are not communicating at all. I can not see any signals before her eliminations and relay totally on timing and we seem to be missing everything.

Just now I actually had a poo in her trainer pants !!! A poo, I can't remember the last time I had to scrape poo out of a pair of pants. I knew straight away she had done it, so thank god she wasn't sat in it, or she would develop a terrible rash.

My wonderful DD does walk/crawl towards me when I think she needs to go. However she doesn't want to be held, use potty and we have a potty chair and a little bjorn downstairs (tried in different positions and different rooms) or the big toilet. Often wet pants just as she gets to me or straight after refusing a potty.

I am wondering if this is linked to her walking and talking. Maybe she feels different standing and doesn't recognise when she wants to go or the pressure is different on her bladder?

Today we have had one poo and three wee misses and it is only teatime, though she was dry/clean for both naps and two journeys out of the house whilst she was being worn in one of our wraps.

I was planning to try real underwear and be braver using trainer pants more outside the house but now I am wondering if we should go back more to nappies until I figure out what I should be doing at this moment ?

So really I am looking for some encouragement. Any ideas on things to do, or should I keep trying different potty places/timing until something starts to work ? Would you go back to nappies, or stay with trainer pants or go to real pants.

Pants as in tiny knickers

Babychair has been wearing trainer pants since she was 5 months old and we thought it time that we tried real pants at home to start with. But where can you find knickers to fit an 10 month old baby ?

I was cleaning out Babychair's little clothes and bagging it all up to go into the loft, when I came across the smaller frilly knickers, she used to wear over her nappy when she was a tiny tot. The smallest pants were from Mothercare (Tiny Baby up to 7.5lbs) which I bought in error as she was never that tiny

I tried them on Babychair and look....


...they fit her perfectly

So I'm off tomorrow to buy a few more pairs and we can use them at home, when a wee miss is no problem. I am going to try and be braver about using trainer pants outside the house, as she hardly ever has an accident when I wear her and she doesn't try to take her trainer pants off, like she does with the nappies. Lastly I am going to save her pocket nappies for naps/nighttime.

Bonus picture of Babychair using a small dustpan and brush, see she copies me...therefore I must clean the house...QED

She sat on her potty !!!

By that I mean she stood up took two steps turned around and sat on her potty by herself. Especially amazing as she has show a big dislike to the potty recently and I have been taking her upstairs to the big toilet.

Fair enough she got straight up but she did it !!!

I'm so proud of her

As you know we potty (EC) Babychair and have done since she was 10 weeks old.

Whilst I have been ill/in hospital/recovering recently Babychair has been in her cloth nappies pretty much full time and although my parents and DH offered her some potty times, they are not as in tune with Babychair as much as I am.

Since I recovered and have been offering more potty times, Babychair started pooing all the time on the potty like before but has shown little interest in the using the potty for wee (we have just been catching the post nap ones only). So I was wondering if she had given up and become diaper trained whilst I was sick, which made me sad.

But then I remembered that I had bought a toilet seat reducer and stored it away as Babychair wanted nothing to do with it at that time.

So I fitted that to our big toilet upstairs and in the last three hours I have witnessed two poos and two wees in the toilet…hopefully that is what she needed, a quiet place with no distractions of toys within sight. I think it also helps that she can't get down herself, so she has a moment to think do I want a wee. Of course I will take her down the moment she asked , I wouldn't upset her in that way. But I think downstairs is far too much fun to slow down and sit on a boring potty.

The first poo was followed by me helping her flush the toilet and I held her so she could watch the poo disappear…she waved goodbye to the poo and said `Hiya'…bless her. She only has a five word vocab and doesn't know goodbye yet

In conclusion I'm off to buy a Little Baby Bjorn Toilet reducer for use outside the house and I hope we can continue to potty Babychair by using the big toilet all the time. It is a pain having to go upstairs every time she wants a wee but it is wonderful having no potties to empty and clean too

Introduction
For us ECing is such a normal and small part of our lives and for the record I don't hover over our daughter with a potty 24 hours a day. In fact I don't think about it as being unusual until I hear or read people expressing negative opinions about how ECing must be time consuming, bad for the child and the people doing EC must be uneducated idiots with dirty homes Hopefully I can address a few of these misconceptions.

How to Introduce Cueing Sounds
Cueing is a sound made by the mum to the child when they eliminate, until the sound and the elimination are linked in the child’s mind. i.e. Every time your child wees in a potty, toilet, nappy or changing mat, make the sound. We use Psss for Wee and Pllll for Poo. It took our daughter a few days at 10 weeks old to make the connection.

Then when you think the child needs to wee, place on or over potty or toilet and make the sound. The child relaxes her bladder and if there is any wee stored, will do so straight away. After a while the child identifies her potty or the toilet as a suitable wee place and doesn’t need cueing but will wee (if needed) straight away when sat on a potty.

We still reinforce the cueing sounds for our daughter, as they come in handy for prompting her to wee in unfamiliar toilets outside the house.

ECing Inside the House
We have potties in the bathroom, living room and our daughter’s bedroom. If she crawls to a potty or cries in a certain way or at set intervals (like after a nap/feed) I will put her on a potty and cue her to wee. If she needs to go, she’ll do so within a few seconds…if she doesn’t need the potty, she simply crawls off it and I put her pants/nappy back on.

ECing Outside the House
On short journeys outside my house like at home, my daughter wears training pants under her clothes. When she needs a wee/poo I take her to the nearest toilet and I pull down her pants, hold her over the toilet, cue her to wee, wipe bottom and pull up pants….very quick and easy. I also have a folding travel potty which I use if I think she wants a poo (my arms get tired holding her out for a 5 minute poo) It is so much easier and less messy than a full nappy change

ECing at Night
At night our daughter wears a Bum Genius Pocket One Size cloth nappy and I potty her when she wakes up. Babies don't wee or poo in their sleep, they wake up dry and then let go when they wake up properly. In fact if anyone is thinking of starting ECing, catching the post sleep wee is a very easy way to start.

Why Bother to EC
It is a shame that it is generally considered a waste of time to help your child to eliminate in a potty as early as possible so that your child only sits in clean dry nappies/pants and not in a soiled dirty nappy. After all if nappies are so great why do we bother potty training older toddlers at all?

My aim is to limit the time my daughter has to spend sitting in a soiled nappy. The fact that we don’t have to deal with dirty (poo) nappies at all and the overall number of nappies/trainer pants which need washing is much lower are additional bonuses.

I hope that by being introduced to the potty/toilet early and being aware of her eliminations will help make Potty Training easier in the long run.

Non Verbal Babies Can Not Use Potties
I don’t understand why the two things quoted as essential for using a potty are verbal communication and the ability to dress on their own. I refuse to unnecessarily force my daughter to sit in a dirty nappy, until she is big enough to verbally tell me she has to wee and is physically capable of undressing herself.

It makes as much sense to say there is no point feeding a child until they can verbal ask for food and use a knife and fork themselves...how old would we start feeding solids using this criteria …maybe 2/3 years old ? But we still introduce solids based on the facts that we as parents have to help with a spoon and have to interpret the body language of when our children are hungry...why do less about our children eliminations ?

I follow my daughter’s body language and help her to the potty when she needs it and she is so much happier for this help.
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Perceived Negatives to ECing a Baby/Toddler

1. Time Consuming
Many mothers see that a big negative to ECing is the need to respond promptly to their baby’s soiled nappies, but for the majority of mothers who change dirty nappies straight away anyway that is not a consideration. It is easier and cleaner to offer the toilet or potty a minute before the wee/poo appears, than to wait for it to happen and clean it up after the fact.

A) 7 Steps to EC
1. Pants down
2. Nappy off
3. Prompt Baby to Wee
4. Wipe bottom
5. Flush toilet
6. Nappy on
7. Pants up.

B) 11 Steps to do a Full Nappy Change
1. Changing mat down
2. Pants off
3. Nappy off
4. Wipes from bag
5. Clean baby’s bottom
6. Clean nappy from bag
7. Nappy on
8. Pants on
9. Changing mat back in bag
10. Place nappy/wipe in plastic bag
11. Put bag in bin

2. Dirty Home Full of Wee/Poo Misses
By backing up ECing with cloth nappies and cloth trainer pants and there is no reason to have mess on the floor. In fact as I give my DD bare bottom time at home, straight after she has used the potty and I have never had wee on the floor.

3. ECing Must Be Fulltime
Babies can be ECed part time, or just evening and weekends. Babies learn that things are different depending on where and with whom they are with. i.e. Nursery give me milk in a bottle and I wee in a nappy, whereas mummy breastfeeds me and I wee in a potty.

4. Raising Your Awareness of Elimination Needs
The only real negative is that once you have started to EC your child, you can’t stop. If my daughter is wriggling and I know the reason is a poo around the corner or she won’t settle at night and I know she needs a wee. I can not ignore that need and my daughter will not settle until she is comfortable. It is far easier to get the potty out/take her to the toilet than it is to wait until she goes in her nappy and then do a full nappy change after the fact.

Conclusion
I know ECing isn’t for everyone, I never thought we would use it but it does work for us. BTW it isn’t perfect even though some days we have no nappies/pants to clean and other days we have loads (only wet nappies, all poos go in the potty and have done for months.) As ECing is not about expecting a baby to be clean and dry perfectly at a young age (though many ECed children are clean very quickly and often dry by 12 months old) but rather about a state of mind, of preventing a baby from sitting in their own waste as much as possible and to my mind that is worth doing.

I never thought we would end up ECing and if my daughter didn’t react so strongly to dirty nappies as a newborn, we might never of tried it. Now I can see my daughter’s cues asking for the potty, I can not ignore her need anymore than I would leave her hungry, cold or tired without helping her to the best of my ability.

I believe in following the easiest parenting path and ECing is for us the best and easiest way to keeping our baby’s bottom clean and dry and nappy rash free.

My 5 month old daughter (very shortly 6 months) has started to flip from a sitting position to a crawling position. It took her a couple of days of getting the gist of turning both her legs around. First few attempts had one leg stuck under her...bless

She is rocking and popping up all over the place. First one leg up,then her chest up by pushing both arms together and then the other leg...it really looks like she is going to crawl sooner rather than later.

This is surprising as I thought babies started crawling at 8/9 months. Though it could take her a few months to get the complete co- ordination of limbs moving in the right order, so I'll just have to watch her and see.

The most surprising part of this is this morning, Babychair seemed to be trying to move towards her potty. I thought she was just practicing moving in general but she wee'd with no other signal to me.

I can't make my mind up if this attempt to move towards the potty is a new EC sign or is she much to young and she isn't signalling as she is far too busy trying to learn how to crawl?

Either way this is very interesting behaviour

As we EC our daughter, she doesn't really wee enough in her nappies to be worth wearing such thick nappies all the time. So to cut down on pointless washing we have swapped to trainer pants just for day time in the house and we still are using cloth nappies for night time and trips out of the house.

What do you think of your new pants?


"I love them...."


"....this much"


We have bought six tiny pairs of Bright Bots Trainer Pants from Twinkle Twinkle website and they are sooo cute

ECing is :-

: The act of offering your child a suitable location for eliminations at regular intervals based on timing, signals, cues and instinct.

: Aiming to reduce the amount of time your baby sits in their own waste

: Aiming to improve communication between the mother and child.

: Meeting another of our childrens needs, alongside feeding, clothing and holding.

: Reducing the amount of nappy waste in the world / reducing amount of nappy washing (depending on if you are using disposals or cloth nappies)

: Standard parenting practice over a large proportion of the world.

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ECing is NOT :-

: Potty training (Any more than the aim of breastfeeding is weaning. The true aim of breastfeeding is to meet your childs hunger needs until they are ready to wean, where as the true aim of ECing is to meet your childs eliminations needs until they are ready to potty train)

: Parent training (ECing is not training the parents, it is the parents reacting to their child cues)

: More work than nappies (When I am out of the house it is much easier to wee my daughter over a toilet, than to totally change a dirty nappy in a changing room)

: An new hippy idea. (This is the way our grandparents dealt with our parents eliminations. My own father was out of nappies at nine months old.)

: Require the parents and parents home to be filled with wee/poo misses (We use cloth nappies as backups and I have less poo contact with cleaning poo out of a potty versus cleaning it off my childs body.)

Babies don't have the capability to hold onto a full bladder but they do hold onto a limited amount of waste before expelling it. Otherwise they would leak all the time...yuck

The bladder works by letting out any stored waste when relaxed.

ECing works by cueing the baby to relax the bladder on cue and if there is any waste the baby will wee/poo this out.

As the baby gets bigger the more wee/poo they can store, so the gap between needing to eliminate increases. At birth babies eliminate every 10 minutes, at 10 weeks Babychair was eliminating every 40 minutes and now at four months old she seemed to have increased to around 2 hours between eliminations.

By contrast Potty Training, relies on the child holding onto a full bladder of wee/poo and verbally notificing the need to go to an adult. Who will then find an potty/toilet to use.

Why/how does ECing work or are we just being lucky ?

Deckchair decided that there is no logical reason for ECing to work. How does Babychair know when/how to use the potty when offered. He is totally flummexed..but the end conclusion was that it works. So despite thinking this is a bit on the hippy side, Deckchair is on board with offering Babychair the potty when needed.

Again Babychair only used one nappy today and she is now dry during naps.

My husband and I sat down and had a long chat about how things were going in regards to how we were parenting our beautiful fourteen week old daughter daughter (and I hope we will continue to do this at regular intervals).

He had been watching me potty our daughter for the last month but had not tried himself. He told me that he had decided that he didn't understand how the pottying (ECing) worked and it shouldn't work with such a young baby but whilst we were getting 'lucky' with catching wee/poo, he is happy to be on board and try it with me.

Two hours later he caught his first wee and was so proud that his daughter had 'wee'd for daddy'...awww

My daughter poos once a day usually after a wiggle and a fart or two.
Her wees are straight away after every sleep/nap, about five minutes after a feed and about every 40 to 50 minutes between feeds/naps...if I am not wearing her. She doesn't wee whilst being carried, she'll just wiggle to signal.

Some days we communicate very well and only go though one nappy, on an average day maybe 3/4 and on a bad day 7/8. But it is very successful in that my daughter is much happier. We started relatively late when she was 10 weeks old, a lot of people start ECing at birth !!!

Only had one miss today, hence only one nappy

Website Links
EarthMoon Elimination Communication Website (Founder of the 'Big' EC Yahoo List)
Tribal Baby
Free To EC
Infant Potty Training
Elimination Communication on Wikipedia
Natural Infant Hygiene
Born Potty Trained
Diaper Free Babies

Forum Links
Elimination Communication 'Big' Yahoo List
Elimination Communication UK Yahoo List
Natural Infant Hygiene Yahoo List
IPT Late Starters (Babies over 6 months old) Yahoo List
Mothering Forum with EC Board

EC Online Shops
Noonee Wilga
The EC store
Continuum Family
Ebay
Twinkle On The Web

Our introduction to ECing

From the beginning my daughter got very upset when she soiled an nappy even though I changed it straight away. She would cry when she had to wee and was even more upset when she pooed in her nappy, as soon as the nappy was clean she was all smiles again. I hated seeing her so upset and even spoke to my doctor about this issue, to make sure there was no physical cause, there wasn't. The doctor explained that some babies hated soiling themselves but hopefully she should outgrow these feelings.

My daughter never out grew her disgust for soiled nappies and by ten weeks old, I started seeing patterns in her eliminations. Babychair always had a wee straight upon waking, five minutes after a feed and between 30 minutes and an hour between these times. Except she doesn't wee whilst sleeping and when being worn (carried in a sling), assuming she is offered the potty at regular intervals.

In order to minimise her distress, I would have my daughter on her changing mat lying on her open clean nappy and as soon as she wee'd/poo'd I would quickly change her. Babychair was still upset by weeing on herself but at least this limited the time she was upset.

Then I thought about the ECing website I had previously read. I had thought the ECing concept was interesting but I was unsure that the amount of effort needed was realistic and so I had dismissed this idea. But now it made more sense, if I knew that Babychair was about to go, why not cue her over the sink to do the wee and then my daughter would be happier about not weeing on herself and it would save some nappy washing for me.

So I started peeing her over the kitchen sink (wee is sterile and carries no germs just wash the sink after use !!!) just to see if it would work. I held her with no nappy over the sink in the classical position, with her back to my stomach and me holding her thighs over the sink/potty. I would whisper 'Psss' in her ear and she relaxed her bladder and she wee'd...I couldn't believe it actually worked !!!

I went on line and read up on more aspects of ECing and various cueing techiques
I started to use a cueing technique when she had nappy free time. i.e. When she was lying down on her changing mat on an open clean nappy and I watched her and when she wee'd I'd make our cueing sound a 'Psssss' to her, so she would hopefully link relaxing her bladder to the sound.

Alongside the cueing sessions, when I knew she will definately wee. I would hold her in the classic position over the sink and potty and I would make the sound to her and when she wee'd I would repeat the sound.

A couple of days later I bought her a little BB potty and we never looked back.


Babychair on her potty at 10 weeks old.