on an ECing journey

One of the things I wanted to start right from birth was 'elimination communication' (EC) [EC, baby signing, reading, baby massage...all not gone as planned].

In terms of EC we actually kind of did start it in the beginning. Because of babies' innate desire not to eliminate on themselves, she would pee once her diaper was off maybe at least half of her diaper changes in the first few weeks. Me and Judge would get excited each time and cue her, to try and get her used to the cue (yes, true infant parents - excited about our baby's elimination hehehe).

However, the fussies got in the way of this as well, as we often had to get her diapered up again quickly so we could pick her up, and then she got used to peeing in her diaper.

But today I 'caught' two eliminations in her potty! The way we have gotten to this point is that after a few weeks of sometimes cuing her whenever I could tell she was working on something, I suddenly had a bolt of inspiration a few weeks ago. Instead of just cuing her, I started holding her 'in position' as well - with her diaper on. After a week or two I started cuing before I was going to change her diaper - try to 'clean out' her system so to speak. And she would tighten her little tummy muscles and make effort and clean her pipes!

So now that I am on a stint of trying out cloth diapers during the day again, instead of cuing her before I take her cloth diaper off, I cue her after I take it off - while I'm holding her over a purple little potty. And she totally gets it!

That is, except for pees. I'm going to have to work a bit to counter the damage I've done there I think - the two times between diapers over the past month that she's finally peed again I scared her mid-stream by suddenly moving her legs (to try and contain the pee on the cloth diaper I always have under her during diaper changes) and using a 'tsssss' cue...I think the 't' part of it and my sudden movement made her jump a bit. In any event she shut the stream off both times.

So I've decided to change the cue (not just 'ssss' as I'm worried she'll suddenly have to go pee if she's playing with friends and they pretend they're a snake :P) - to kind of a 'hsu' sound...噓 in Chinese. I'm also going to have to try to use the same method I think - first just cue when I catch her in the act with her diaper on, then to cue and position with diaper on, then I can eventually do it all diaper off. Not even close to as easy to catch her in the pee diaper-on, but I think I can do it.

And if I get discouraged I have inspiration from one of the moms in our living-complex - she does 'early potty training' (not quite EC, but cueing infants and training them to be diaper free before 1 basically) with her 10 month old - who most of the time goes totally diaper free. Early potty training is totally common here in Taiwan, especially kids who are taken care of by their grandparents a large chunk of time.


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