kim through
   the looking glass

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.

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.)