E.C. or Elimination Communication

We started E.C. the day after we brought her home from the hospital. My mom was with us, and she held Hannah over the plastic container from the hospital, whistled, and Hannah actually peed into the bucket. We were all extremely excited. I tried it a couple of hours later. I held Hannah, whistled, and she peed again. I was estatic! DH tried it a few days later. We continued this Pavlovian conditioning and were careful not to whistle at other times since DH likes to whistle.

Hannah seemed to learn. We still left her in a diaper, but tried our best to take off the diaper and give her a chance to pee and poo. We especially tried to catch poops when she started to show signs (red nose, grunting, vocalization, squirming). Catching every pee was rather difficult since the signs were not as apparent (sometimes vocalization & squirming).

I had read about E.C. during 1st trimester during my online research. I told DH and my mom about it. My mom told me that they had "E.C.ed" with me (using the principles) during potty training at a much later age than Hannah, but not as newborn. I was cloth diapered and "E.C.ed." DH was potty trained around 18 months since he was the youngest of 5 kids, and the next child up was 15 months older. Reading proponents of E.C., some babies have gone diaper-free since 3 months or even birth. Hannah is not a diaper-free baby yet. We've used a combination of disposables, cloth, and taking her to the toilet.

We don't necessarily expect Hannah to be potty trained any younger than about a year, but it makes sense to not "train" kids to dirty themselves while in a diaper, and then have to "retrain" them to eliminate in the toilet, when it's been okay for them to mess themselves the whole time. We support training children to eliminate in the toilet from the get go. It just makes sense to us not to send conflicting communication to kids. It is especially nice when we don't have to clean up messy poops in the diaper or any blowouts onto clothes. It has also been nice because it has cut down on the amount of diapers we go through.

Since our move to the townhome, Hannah started establishing more of a routine (around 4 months), and she elminates her poop when I take her to the toilet 1st thing upon her waking up. We also started on cloth diapers as backup while we are at home in the day. With E.C., it's been nice since she does not poop in the cloth diaper, hence no poop to wash. She still sometimes pees in the cloth diaper. While we are out and about, it's not as convenient to do E.C., so we just put her in a disposable diaper. Hannah also wears a disposable at night (and when I'm tired or busy & don't want to spend the time to take her to the toilet). DH is committed to the concept of E.C. and even more vigilant than me because he wants to reduce diapering costs. Overall so far, we've spent maybe around $100 on diapers ($12 on a 12-pack of cloth diapers, and the rest on disposables). I think that's pretty good for 6 months.