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   the looking glass

I just got back from Little Bird’s Nest program (storytime for kids 0-3!) and after chatting with my good friend, the owner of Re•Diaper, I realized it’s high time I put up a review of the beautiful Little Beetle Organic Wool Underwear we bought for Gwen a few weeks ago.

When Gwen first began to make it through the day with taking herself to the potty when she needed to go, we decided it was high time to introduce the need to wear underwear, along with the concept that, unlike diapers, one should not urinate/defecate in them. Read the rest of this entry »

I figured it’s about time that I give a little potty update. After a great start to practicing natural infant hygiene and slowly getting better, I feel mostly like a NIH success story! I honestly didn’t believe this could work without a tonne of work.

And honestly?

After the first month or so, it feels like less work.

Although Gil doesn’t have a normal rhythm to his bladder/bowel habits - that I’ve consciously discerned, anyways! - we manage to catch quite a bit! He’s becoming good at signaling his needs and sometimes it’s very easy to tell that he needs to pee - he will often start fussing and otherwise show that he’s uncomfortable and if he’s nursng, he’ll pop on and off the breast. I continue to hold him over a potty (we have this one) during diaper changes as well a any time I intuitively feel he may have to go.

Some days I catch 10 or 12 pees and he goes hours without having a wet diaper. Other days I catch 1 or 2 and it seems like I’m always missing his cues. I probably miss 2 or 3 poops a week.

At night, Gil was soaking through both his (disposable!) diaper and sleeper nightly (sometimes several times per night) so I decided to abandon the disposable and go for cloth. When he starts stirring at night, I try to remind myself it’s either let him pee or change his diaper. Depending on how tired I’m feeling, I’ll potty him or change him if it’s too late. Often, he’ll settle right back down to sleep with no fuss if it was just the need to pee. If he’s hungry, he nurses pretty quickly and goes right back to sleep. I thought it was a bit impossible to think that babies don’t pee in their sleep, but now I know otherwise - Gil pees only when fully awake or when he’s stirring/fussing while in a very light sleep. In fact on a few separate occasions, he has slept 9:30 until between 3 and 5:30, waking to eat with a dry diaper! I’m amazed!!

Gwen is doing well too! We’re now at the point where she is ready to wear underwear at home and perhaps some wool underwear (like these) when we’re out of the house. Nights are a different story - she’s not waking up to tell us she needs to pee anymore - but that’s okay. It’ll come.

Gil pees a LOT. I remember reading some Natural Infant Hygiene (NIH) information that said some babies pee every 15 minutes. “Holycrap,” I remember thinking. “That’s impossible!”

It’s not impossible. I think Gil pees that often - at least for part of the day.

While I haven’t been completely consistent in pottying Gil, I have figured out over the past week or so that he’s likely to oblige me with a pee every time I hold him over the potty. So that I don’t have to bend quite so far, we’ve relegated an old stainless steel bowl to potty use. It stays under the change table and I can put in on the table to hold him over during diaper changes.

Today, for example, I’ve caught three pees and a poop and I’ve done nothing more than hold him over a bowl after I’ve got his diaper - which I’m changing because it’s wet - off. That’s four more diapers I don’t have to change

Wow, that title seems odd.

While I’ve been witness to a few of Gil’s pees and have been able to make the cue sound (’pssssssss’), I’ve never purposefully caught one.

Until just now.

I’ve read everywhere about how you’re most likely to catch a pee just after a nap, since babies tend not to want to soil their sleeping area.

Makes sense to me - what other animals encourage their young to do so?

So as Gil was waking from his long afternoon nap (12-2:45PM today!), I removed his (dry!) diaper to nurse him and observe his cues. He nursed a long while on the first side with no sign of a pee and then pulled off, arched his back and straightened his legs. I held him in the basic under-thigh hold over our potty insert.

And he peed!

I made the cueing sound as he peed and aimed the stream a bit and he finished. I offered again after the second time, thinking he might have to poop, but he didn’t.

Yay for our first Natural Infant Hygiene success!

***UPDATE***

Just after I hit ‘post’, Gil came off the second side doing some fussing and leg stretching. So I figured, ‘what the heck!’ and took him over to the potty. Took off the (still dry!) diaper and held him over it in position - immediate pee! I was so taken aback I didn’t manage to cue him until pretty well after he finished. He was still a bit squirmy, so I said, “Do you need to poop?” and made a grunting sound, being sure to flex my abs. And my little man pooped! Wow. I can’t believe this crazy stuff works

I was recommended the book Diaper Free: The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene (Ingrid Bauer) by a number of parents on an email list in which I participate. At first the idea of Natural Infant Hygiene (NIH), or Elimincation Communication (EC) as it is often called, totally grossed me out - after all, aren’t babies and diapers part and parcel?

I figured it couldn’t hurt to read the book and maybe it would give me some interesting things to try with Gwen, so I picked it up from my library and dove into it. People, I love this book!

The idea behind NIH is that babies are born with the ability to consciously relax their bodies and urinate or defecate just like an older child or adult, but that we train them to use a diaper instead. From pages 98-99:

“Elimination Communication begins with the baby’s awareness of subtle sensations, which indicate the filling of the bladder. The baby may then signal the parent, or the parent may anticipate the need through timing or intuition. The parent holds the child over a receptacle and make a familiar sound. The child then voluntarily relaxes and releases the urine before the bladder has become uncomfortably full. Over time, as muscles strengthen and conscious control increases, the baby is able to retain and hold in larger quantities of urine for longer periods of time if necessary. This occurs gradually with no particular focus or effort as a natural and inevitable consequence. About the time the sphincter muscles fully develop, the diaper-free baby achieves consistent continence.”

Bauer then goes on to contrast this with conventional potty training, in which a child has learned to pee in its diaper only when the bladder is very full and it cannot hold any more urine. When we then ask that child to begin using a toilet or potty to urinate in, he or she must contract the sphincter muscles and make it to the potty or toilet to release the urine. These kids just literally don’t sense the subtler signals that their bladder is sending to their brain in order to pee voluntarily before the bladder is full until much later than the toilet learning has begun.

I think one of the most interesting things I learned in this book is about the differences between the Western world’s concept of ‘toilet readiness’ - that a child cannot possibly toilet train before at least 18 months because they don’t have the ability - and the Eastern world’s belief that children are quite able to communicate effectively about their elimination needs. I enjoyed this quote a whole lot - from pages 70-71:

“One of the most glaring problems with the concept of toilet training readiness is its heavy ethnocentric focus. The “readiness” theory can only even begin to be considered viable if one pretends that the vast majority of the non-Western world does not exist … Millions of mothers around the globe know that babies are “ready” and aware from birth. The empirical evidence is overwhelming and stretches back for eons. Why has the experience of the majority of the world’s mothers and babies been ignored for so long? Are only modern North American and European babies subject to this maturational lag?”

The book then describes the suspicious timing of the release of scientific literature to promote the ‘toilet readiness’ theory by Dr. Brazelton during the year the first disposable diapers - Pampers - were released. Not to mention that Dr. Brazelton happened to sit for a time on the Pampers Parenting Institute Pediatric Roundtable. Coincidence? I happen to think not!

The book is filled with stories and instructions as to how best support your child’s elimination - whether you start at birth, after a few months, or start later with a toddler. I’m planning to start pretty early with Love Bug - we’ll see how it goes!

Here are some other resources for learning about NIH:

• borntopotty.com
• diaperfreebaby.org
• tribalbaby.org - Learn about Elimination Communication
• Free to EC! My Journey to Elimination Communication

I recently borrowed Ingrid Bauer’s Diaper Free from my local library and was inspired, after a number of days of Gwen refusing to go near the potty, to just take off her diaper and let her run around. I know that she’s able to get herself on and off the potty just fine and I know that when she has to go, she tells me (ie. when she’s naked after a bath or after a diaper change), so I figured, “Why not?”

The first day, she pooped on the ground once. The rest of the day, she’d exclaim “Pee!” and run to the potty to relieve herself.

The second day, she took herself to the potty every time throughout the day. We even went to a friend’s house and she told me she had to pee while we were there (I had put her in a pair of training pants to go out in). She even woke up from her nap dry.

Today, the third day, we had a few misses - she once peed on the floor right in front of the potty (she was wearing a skirt and I don’t think she could figure out how to sit down without sitting on it!), and she peed once on me (I was giving her a sip of my tea … warm in, warm out?).

I think, though, that the miss that will go down in history is this one: Brad took Gwen up to the bathroom with him and she was playing with some toys. He looked up as she kinda made a grunting noise and asked if she needed to pee. She nodded, so Brad put her on the toilet to pee.

As she peed, she pointed and said, “Duck!”

Brad looked over at the duck and said, “Oh. Duck.”

Gwen giggled, put her hand on her head and said “Hat!”

“Yeah. Hat.” Brad said as he opened the door to call me up, explaining that Gwen had had a bit of an accident.

“Okaaaaaay … do you need my help?” I asked from the kitchen and headed to the stairs.

“Kinda. She pooed on her duck. And called it a hat.”

At that, I burst into laughter and tromped up the stairs. Sure enough, on the floor of the bathroom, her beloved duckie was wearing a poo hat. And Gwen was still giggling and pointing.

Man, I love my kid!

Man, that was so much more entertaining than changing a dirty diaper!

(We will forever be puzzled as to how, precisely, the poo got to be in that exact position.)