Going diaper-less

My son received some adorable little boy undies (boxer briefs?) for Christmas and the last two days I've experimented with having him go diaper-free. I haven't been brave enough to attempt letting him sleep without a diaper, but when DS is awake, I've been putting him into the underwear. This actually only amounts to about six or seven hours a day. So far we've had two accidents and three successful eliminations. The first day I found out something I'd long suspected, that DS likes to pee when he's sitting in his high chair. Actually, both accidents took place in the high chair. But I learned from that, and now when he gets the glazed over look and stops paying attention to the food, I know he's about to go and can whisk him to the nearest potty.  This is something I wouldn't have figured out if I hadn't attempted to go diaper free, so I feel like it's already paid off, especially because the cleanup from the accident was minimal. (There is very little carpet in my home.)

I recommend trying this out when you have a couple of days where you don't have to leave the house, I think it would be too stressful to try to watch for your baby's signals when you are out and can be distracted by any number of things. Actually, if you could turn off cable and the Internet, that would help too. Seriously, though. I found that being right with DS the whole time he's diaper-less made me less anxious because I was able to really look for his signs.

I also realized that I want to find a physical sign for him to use to tell me he has to go. Sometimes he pounds on my arm or chest repeatedly - it's a very specific tapping sort of thing - and I think that has to do with his potty needs, but be doesn't do it every time he needs to go, so I need to either encourage that more or start my own sign and start using it consistently. Any ideas?

The Pee-Nightmare Connection

Since he was about six weeks old, DS used to start screaming as if in extreme pain in the middle of the night. He would cry, go red in the face and howl with his eyes closed. There was little I could do to soothe him though he would calm down after several minutes and drink a bottle of formula before falling back to sleep. After this continued intermittently over the months, I did a search on "baby nightmares" and found Dr. Greene's site about night terrors in which he explains the pithy terms "confusional arousals" and "nighttime dryness." Apparently these night terrors are brought on by the urge to urinate or the desire by the child to stay dry while sleeping. Once I learned this, I would put DS on the potty when he awoke crying (or screaming) and sure enough, he would pee, often having held quite a bit of liquid in his bladder. Now that he's older (11 months), however, he tends not to wake up in such an agitated state and often when he does wake up, his diaper is already wet and he just wants to be changed and fed. But it was interesting to learn about the link and that it could help some parents who are puzzled by sudden night terrors by their infants or toddlers.

Getting Regular

As of late The Boy and I have developed a part-time EC pattern that seems to work for us. I don't know if I'm betting better at picking up his cues or if I'm just holding him over the toilet more frequently, but we've cut back on diapers and rarely have a #2 miss. It's been five months since I started the EC experiment and I'm quite happy with the results. I'm hoping that by the time he is a year old we will be completely free from daytime diapers.

Our successes to date are as follows:

• The Boy will go in pretty much any toilet I hold him over - including in an airplane, which is quite loud and not just a little drafty.
• He doesn't poop in a diaper when I'm around. By this I mean that as long as I'm near enough to hear him, he'll grunt and look at me before he'll actually go. Number 2 in a diaper is a last resort for him.
• He doesn't pee when his diaper is off and he's not over a toilet. Meaning, I don't have to rush through diaper changes or into/out of baths for fear of getting peed on.
• On average, I catch five pees a day, with between three to five misses. On days when I am using a cloth diaper I usually only miss one or two. I think this is because I pay more attention. I am seriously considering moving to underwear during the day.

A couple of things I've learned that help me:

• Now that The Boy is standing, it's easier to use a pull-up style diaper instead of a tabbed one, which is a detriment to my use of cloth part of my motivation toward underwear. I most often use the Huggies Dry Pants, though I don't know what is available in other areas.
• Because I started EC by holding him over the toilet after he ate, I've continued that pattern and he now waits to go because he knows he will have a chance in the near future.
• Give yourself a break. Right now I don't do much EC if The Boy wakes at night. Sometimes he will look at the bathroom door, which has developed as an EC cue specific to his room. When he does that, I take him in, but if he seems too sleepy, I will just change his diaper and put him back down. For now, I'm happy with our daytime system.

Exclaim in fear

I missed a #2 today. Not to get too graphic, but the clean-up required a tub and a removable shower head. I don't know if #2 is always going to be this sticky, but if it is, I'm sure glad that DS usually waits to go in the toilet. If he were always going #2 in a diaper I'm sure I would dread each little grunt DS ever made. "Oh no! He might be pooping!" I'd exclaim in fear.

But instead I say, "Woo-ee. Sure glad I usually get you over a toilet before this stuff comes out."

Also, I am now almost certain that I don't actually see DS's cue for peeing, but that I instead just take him to the toilet often enough to catch a few pees. This is somewhat disconcerting, as I'd like to eventually get the 'communication' part of EC working. Right now I'm sort of doing elimination timing. I guess it gets DS used to going in the toilet, but it would probably be less work for both of us if I could figure out some way for him to tell me he's gotta go. Any suggestions?

What's In a Vessel?

DS's trigger for eliminating does not appear to be the "pss-pss" sound but instead is when the feeling or act of sitting on his plastic potty chair. DS gets stagefright when I put him on the big toilet seat or hold him over the toilet. EC experts say that the vessel shouldn't matter, so that you are free from having to tote the potty training chair around with you in the car. But for now DS is only comfortable doing the duty on his own toilet, his green portable potty chair.

A Day of EC and Counting Diapers

I wanted to get a better sense of DS's elimination patterns, so we tried a full day of EC, placing DS's potty chair front and center in the TV room. Here's how it went.

6:30 a.m. CATCH - wake-up pee
6:35 a.m. Diaper #1; then 6 oz. milk (formula)
8:00 a.m. Breakfast of pureed apples mixed with baby oatmeal, plus 2 oz. milk
8:15 a.m. CATCH - post-breakfast pee and poo
8:17 a.m. Re-used diaper #1
9:15 a.m. MISS - post-post breakfast pee and poo
9:18 a.m. Diaper #2
9:30 a.m. 2 oz. milk; morning nap
10:15 a.m. MISS - put DS on potty when he woke up but had missed a pee; Diaper #3
10:45 a.m. Snack/meal - 1 jar of pumpkin/sweetcorn puree and 2 oz. milk
11:15 a.m. CATCH - poo; re-used diaper #3
11:40 a.m. Stroller walk
12:00 p.m. MISS/CATCH - caught tail-end of pee session when I put DS on his potty chair
12:10 p.m. 2 oz. milk; MISS - DS peed in my lap and we both laughed hysterically
12:13 p.m. Diaper #4
12:20 p.m. Nap
1:45 p.m. MISS - put DS on potty but he had already peed while napping
1:46 p.m. Diaper #5
2:00 p.m. 3 oz. milk
2:45 p.m. MISS - diaper was already wet; Diaper #6
3:00 p.m. Snack/meal - jar of applesauce
3:20 p.m. Put on potty; no results
3:30 p.m. Went to the store
4:30 p.m. MISS - Diaper #7
4:45 p.m. Bath - Diaper #8
5:00 p.m. 5 oz. milk
5:15 p.m. CATCH - pre-bed pee; re-used Diaper #8
5:30 p.m. Bedtime

By the end of the day I was exhausted, and dismayed that there were more misses than catches. But by spending a day focusing on EC, we had more catches than ever before in a single day. I was upset that we did not significantly reduce the number of diapers used, but this should not have been a surprise since with EC you are checking/removing the diaper frequently. The benefit is that your baby never is sitting in a wet or dirty diaper for an extended period of time. EC days (or chunks of days) are important for getting a better understanding of your child's elimination patterns, but I admit I was so burned out after our EC day that I didn't try to catch anything for the next two days.

I've become less intense about EC of late and typically only put DS on the potty after waking and meals. It's been less stressful for both of us, and still we are seeing progress. DS seems to recognize the purpose of sitting on his potty chair (he crawls off of it when he doesn't need it), and he seems extremely relieved (no pun intended) to be able to have a BM on his potty rather than in his diaper. The challenge in training babies when they are older (DS is 9 months old) is that they are used to eliminating in their diapers. So the baby holds it until you put the diaper ON him. It's important to stay the course during this "re-training" process and to celebrate the little victories, like the other day when DS stared at me and willed me to place him on his potty, after which he immediately went #2. Little stinky wonderful victories.

Midnight WeePee

Last night DS woke up around 2 a.m., which is not unusual. He usually only wakes once in the night - I feed him and he falls right back to sleep. So last night, when he woke, I assumed it was business as usual. But once he'd eaten, he was acting just a little bit different. He wasn't crying or fussy, just more alert than usual. I laid him in his crib, and started to go back to bed, when I thought, "Maybe he's got to go to the bathroom." I worry about taking him into a lighted bathroom in the middle of the night because I don't want to get him all riled up so that he won't go back to sleep. But last night I decided to take him in and see if he'd go. As soon as I held him over the toilet, he pooped. It was my first nighttime catch. He went right back to sleep, and so did I. I really feel like we are making progress. DS on letting me know he's got to go, and me on understanding him.