By mum, Guin. I first heard about EC when my daughter (now 5) was a toddler. I thought it sounded completely barmy, though ironically it would have worked really well with her because as a baby her signals were very clear - she cried every time she weed, and we wondered why we changed her nappy each time while all our NCT friends' babies were happy to stay in their Pampers for hours! It didn't occur to me to try EC with my son (now 2) until I saw how well it worked in practice for families I met who were doing it. I still took a bit of convincing because I was sure it would be a lot of hard work but after reading 'The Diaper Free Baby' it finally clicked for me and we decided to go for it when Ralph was 8 months old. We thought we would try it out and EC part-time, perhaps concentrating on poos. I was amazed the first morning we tried it, Ralph happily sat on the potty and produced a wee and a sizeable poo! He seemed so pleased with the idea, and I got a strong sense straight away that he preferred this to having to poo in a nappy. Any lingering doubts I had about EC vanished when I saw how well Ralph reacted to it. The bonus for me of course was being able to flush his waste away easily from the potty rather than trying to get it off the nappy, so I was instantly hooked. In fact we rarely missed a poo after that for several months. It was more difficult to catch wees and we relied on 'potty-tunities' because I found it difficult to read his signals (I found in general his signals for other needs e.g. nursing were more difficult to read compared to my daughter's). But we had reasonable success with pottying at relevant times (e.g. when we were going out, when we arrived somewhere, after waking up, after getting out of the sling, etc.). Ralph was always happy to sit on the potty and used the opportunity to wee. Although we never managed more than about 12 hours without missing it greatly reduced our washing load as well as being more pleasant for Ralph. Things changed when he reached his first birthday and became very focused on standing and starting to walk. He went on an extended potty strike, partly he didn't want to be sitting but it was also that he didn't want to be positioned by me in any particular way. He also started choosing to poo standing up in his nappy, and reacted badly if I suggested using the potty or toilet. When we went back to nappy poos I realised fully how much I had benefited from EC! This persisted for months and after struggling for a while I realised the most important thing was to follow his lead, so I decided to put EC on the back burner for a while and go back to nappies but just try to keep the communication going in the hope that this would help him maintain his awareness of elimination. Just lately, since his second birthday, Ralph has been showing an interest in using the potty again. When he chooses to, he enjoys sitting on the potty to wee and takes great pride in helping me flush it away. He has also started telling us at times if he has done a wee in his nappy, although he tends to resist having it changed. Although we are not currently ECing according to most people's idea of what that involves, I am really glad we tried it and have the framework to understand his elimination needs. I think this will make his eventual graduation from nappies a much smoother process. |