Holy Cow!! Why does it seem completely impossible for me to keep up with this blog?? Henry is now eight months old. He is turning into such a big boy. I suppose I should write about his first Thanksgiving and Christmas but I really don't feel like it.. I'll keep it short - he ate turkey and green beans on thanksgiving, he opened presents xmas morning (we all spent the night at the Schu's), and for New Years he slept while mommy and daddy stayed up til midnight and shared some champagne.
Elimination Communication - a toilet training practice in which a caregiver uses timing, signals, cues, and intuition to address an infant's need to eliminate waste. Caregivers try to recognize and respond to babies' bodily needs and enable them to urinate and defecate in an appropriate place (e.g. a toilet). Caregivers either use diapers (nappies) as a back-up in case of misses, avoid the use of them altogether, or do a mixture of the two. EC emphasizes communication between the caregiver and child, helping them both become more attuned to the child's innate rhythms and control of urination and defecation. The practice can be done full time, part time, or just occasionally. The term "elimination communication" was inspired by traditional practices of diaper-less baby care in less industrialized countries and hunter-gatherer cultures.[1] Some practitioners of EC begin soon after birth, although it can be started with babies of any age. (got that from wiki)
So of all Henry's new accomplishments, the one I am most excited about by far would be the fact that we have started this form of infant potty training. He is seriously rocking it!! And it is so much easier than you'd think! The first couple days I was extremely skeptical, but still hopeful, as I'd just watched a thousand youtube videos of babies peeing in little potty chairs or toilets! I was excited, especially because I had an adorable potty chair sitting in my bathroom that'd been there since I was 7 months pregnant. Honestly the first few days didn't go so well and I thought that it was too late and that I'd trained him to wet himself, but by the third day I really think he started to 'get it' and understand why I kept putting him on this strange little seat!
I started experimenting with this just before he turned 7 months old and now he goes potty in his little potty chair EVERY single morning and usually at least two more times throughout the day. It has become part of our routine. So I figure I have half of "potty training" over with! He knows what his potty chair is for and goes potty usually right away when I set him down, so the other half I guess would be teaching him that the potty is the ONLY place he should 'go'.
A couple more reasons I love EC right now: poops are WAY easier to clean up when all you do is dump & flush down the toilet than having to wipe it off there butts after they've squashed it all up into their baby chub creases... and I feel like I'm doing my part to "go green" by saving a couple diapers a day, without having to spend a ton of money on trendy cloth diapers. I don't think I could ever do cloth diapers, and I'm not saying that as an uninformed person. I have plenty of mommy friends that use them and attended a cloth diaper mommy meeting to see them all... but the problem is that you have to see the poop/poop residue more than once. With disposable, they poop, you wipe them and throw it away, but with cloth, no matter what kind you get you still have to wash it later. And I am bad enough with laundry as it is!
Ok, kind of went off on a tangent there... Anyway, I have only been EC'ing occasionally. I mean, I do it every day, but its not like I sit in the living room staring at him trying to guess when he is gonna go pee! I have things to do! So I run errands, meet up with moms, and just try to make sure that I always put him on the potty whenever he wakes up for the morning, when he wakes up from naps, and when we just get home from places (because usually he sleeps in the car). And by doing this something else thats super awesome has happened! He used to pee through diapers EVERY SINGLE NIGHT no matter what brand or style or position he was laying in... now he holds it until I put him on the potty chair. He doesn't wake up after 10 - 12 hours with a dry diaper, not even close to that yet, but it is only wet (never poopy, never leaky) and he always pees and poops immediately in the morning on his potty while I start some coffee.
Henry learned to clap by watching me clap every time he went potty in his potty chair! Didn't even know I was teaching him, lol.
Well, hope that this post was informative!! I will post more Henry updates soon on his other recent accomplishments!
