Agility

Inspired by a few friends, we have tried elimination communication with baby V. She has used the potty pretty much every day since she was about 11 weeks old. It's not a big deal, as she just goes when we put her on it, which we do with each diaper change. I have a little potty at the diaper changing table and I let her sit on it when her bottom is bare between diapers. It's apparently a natural thing. I say that because it's been sort of effortless on our part. We probably save a diaper or two a day by doing it this way. I am certain that if we put more effort into getting her to the potty - giving her pottytunities as the EC folks would say - she would go there more frequently and would hold it for those pottytunities.

And this routine has been very comfortable for us. Yet, as we all know, what becomes a comfortable routine must change.

Lately, she is a bit reluctant to use the potty for me. She wants to stand instead of sit. But more importantly, she is loathe to let me diaper her. She rolls and crawls away, like a little bucking bronco trying to avoid lasso of a diaper.

After a few of these diaper wars, a dim bulb starts to glow in my tired brain. Hm....maybe she wants to go without diapers. Sure enough, when I put her down on the floor with her bare bum, she is delighted. She crawls around and laughs and claps, showing her approval. Mommy finally figured me out.

Being diaper free is another step in the regulation of elimination needs, and so I am comfortable with the concept. But I have only bothered with this as a potty training method with walking, talking children in the past. I will give the EC folks another nod on this one because I think that my other kids were probably trying to tell me the same things when they were her age. I called it the diaper rodeo and I remember their disdain of getting diapered. They eventually caved to the forcible diapering. Oh, my. I feel badly about that now. It just never occured to me that there were other options.

Putting aside this particular load of guilt, and moving back to the present, little nakey butt V was just the other day crawling around the house while I clean up after dinner. Suddenly, she started crying and crawling to me, grabbing my legs and pulling herself up as she is wont to do when she needs to be picked up. Of course, this happens at the same time that I was trying to help her older sisters resolve some sort of conflict, which is a common experience in our house - baby needs something and is expected to wait a few minutes while the older sisters demands are met. All because she doesn't have the words to argue!

As I reached down to pick up suddenly hysterical baby, I notice that she pooped just as she reached me. She stood up in it just before I picked her up. After a quick wash in the sink, with baby still hysterical, I remembered the advice from EC parents. A "miss" (failure to get products of elimination into the potty) is the perfect time to put the baby on the potty because there may be more where that came from.

So, I took her to the toilet, put her on the potty seat, and sat on a stool facing her to hang on to her. And our little 11 month old baby sat and pooped in the big toilet for the first time. Hooray!

Being a seasoned parent, I know that this is by no means the end of diapers. The road to bladder and bowel control is a long and winding one. But it is a reminder that I need to be more agile.

Frankly, it's very easy to put a diaper on a baby and call it a day. It's easy to do a lot of things that become routine to us. Unfortunately, it's incumbent upon us to change the routines regularly and often without notice while we adjust to the growing child's changing needs. So, now I need to think about ways to work diaper free time into our overfull fall schedule.

I must think of a way to put this on my resume to show the intuition and mental agility I have gained as a parent. Unfortunately, these skills are currently dulled by sleep deprivation and mild anxieties. But someday when I can sleep and not worry about failing to meet the needs of my children in some unknown and as yet undiscovered way, I will be sharp as a razor.