Months One to Three

I didn't being actively "potty training" my son until he was three months old. That is to say, I didn't hold him over a toilet until he was three months old. Prior to that, I was attempting my version of Elimination Communication by making a "pss-pss" sound when I would change his diaper or clothes. Sometimes he would go when I made the sound, sometimes not. Sometimes he was already going, and I would make the sound to attempt an association - my theory being that if he heard the "pss-pss" noise while already peeing, eventually I could make the noise and it would cause him to pee. (Friends have since pointed out that this is not "my theory" at all, but rather classical conditioning a la Pavlov's Dog and may be ethically questionable when applied to a human, but whatever.)


Either way, it wasn't going all that well - and I certainly missed more elimination communication moments than I witnessed. Then a friend came to visit and she told me about a mutual friend of ours who had potty trained her daughter by the time she was a year old. [If you are new to the EC world - "potty trained" in this context doesn't mean that her one-year old was walking into the bathroom and hopping onto the toilet all by herself, but instead that she would indicate to her parents when she had to go and they would help her do so. I will continue to use "potty train(ed/ing)" to refer to successful communication between child and parent resulting in a non-accident scenario.] She said that our mutual friend would just hold her baby over the toilet after every time she ate. It was simple and brilliant, and I implemented the system straightaway.

So the next morning, after DS ate, I took him into the bathroom, and hung his little bum over the seemingly cavernous toilet bowl. I made a "pss-pss" noise. He pooped. He peed. I laughed.
I realized then that I had come into the bathroom with no clean diapers or wipes and had no exit strategy. So I stood him on the edge of the toilet seat and held him with one arm while I reached back down to the diaper I had just removed and attempted to get that diaper back underneath him so I could carry him back to the changing table without risking dripping bodily fluids en route. It worked well enough, and so began our WeePee Baby.