Now my baby is eating solid foods and in full crawling mode, so things have definitely shifted in the potty training scenario. Because he is discovering so much when he is crawling, he gets so into what he is doing that he doesn’t tell me when he is peeing anymore. Every once in a while when he is sitting still and he has to pee (in the stroller or in his high chair) he will make is “uh-uh” sound letting me know it’s time for the potty. But I seem to be missing most pees these days. My husband and I noticed around the same time that we was not verbalizing it anymore. I think it is just a phase. What I feel good about is that he still does know when he needs to pee when he is paying attention. And I usually catch every pee right when he wakes up which makes me feel somewhat successful. I’ve watched him without a diaper on and now he likes to pee standing up.  I just ordered a “weeman urinal” that attaches to the toilet so he can stand in front of the toilet and pee into it.  I can’t wait until he can walk over the the toilet and pee on his own.

Okay, let’s talk about pooping.  This is a whole new phase now that he is eating solid foods.  Yes, the poop is stinky now.  At first he was really constipated from eating jarred baby foods with potatoes in it, so I knew exactly when he had to poop because he would scream since it was so painful for him to push it out.  Once I eliminated potatoes from his diet, it got easier.  He would make urgent sounds and I would rush him the the potty.  It’s usually in the morning when he’s eating.  But lately he hasn’t been making the urgent sounds and I just notice that he will start to grunt.  I catch it most of the time unless I am distracted for some reason.  Sometimes he’ll poop in his diaper if he is standing up.  I think it is because he doesn’t know what to do and he feels stuck there standing.  There is so much that is new to him so things like standing and then moving away from whatever is helping to prop him up I’m sure seems like a lot to negotiate.  The whole crawling/standing phase creates so many new things for them to discover that I am sure it is overwhelming sometimes and the old business of peeing and pooping takes a back seat to all the new discoveries.  I’m pretty sure he’ll get back to it eventually.  I’ll keep you posted…

Okay, so I’ve been doing the infant potty training (aka elimination communication) thing for nearly six months now and here’s my experience since my last post:

As my baby grew older, his body language cues started to change as well as his sounds that told me he needed to go to the potty. He stopped stretching his legs out when he needed to poop which had been the tell-tale sign starting at 6 weeks old. At around 3 months old he began to make a sort of urgent sound “uhh-uhh” when he needed to pee and/or poop.

He began to try to hold his pee (a lot of the time) and poop until I could get him to the potty. I would miss a lot of pees when I was distracted (talking on the phone or doing something where I wouldn’t hear him), but he would almost always tell me when he needed to go. Then one day somewhere around 5 months old, he started doing silent pees where he wouldn’t tell me when we would go. It happened a lot for a while and then tapered off some, but now he still does do silent pees sometimes.

Here’s an interesting thing that happened while we were traveling for 3 weeks. I decided that cloth diapers would take up too much space in my suitcase and that washing them while on the road would be unpredictable, so I used disposable diapers. During the time I used disposables, I found it was much harder to tell when he was peeing. His sounds also changed while we were on this trip so I really had a hard time catching pees. I thought that once we got home and I started to use cloth diapers again that I would get back on track. It has been better, but not quite as good as when we left for our trip. I think that using a diaper where you and the baby can’t feel wetness can set back the potty training process. Now I think he got used to peeing in his diaper so he is not as good about telling me until he is really wet. I know part of it is that I am not clear on what his sound signal is anymore and/or body language cues. I know what I need to do is spend a few hours with his diaper off so that I can witness exactly what happens right before he pees. The thing is that now he is in full crawling mode so it is not as easy to do. I will try it soon though so I can get back on track.

Another thing I found when I was traveling was that it is not always easy and societally acceptable to have a potty trained baby. I had brought his potty-on-the-go seat with me on the airplane so that I could just have him pee into the bag and not have to get up every time he needed to pee. But when passengers and the flight attendant saw the potty, they looked disgusted as if they thought I was going to have him poop and subject everyone to the smell. At that point in his potty training, he would fuss and be unhappy if I didn’t take him to the potty, so I just saw it as a way to keep him happy and less fussy. Once the flight attendant told me I had to take him into the bathroom, it became challenging to get him there in time before his bladder couldn’t hold it any longer. There was usually a wait for the bathroom, so I ended up changing wet diapers instead of catching his pees.

I also realized while on the road that some cities like Beverly Hills don’t have bathrooms in many of the smaller boutique stores. It is also impossible to just crouch down behind a bush because there are no bushes or leafy trees in Beverly Hills. Even when I did know when he had to go pee, I couldn’t find a place to take him.

I also realized that when you are in a city where it takes time (30+ minutes) to drive around and you can’t just pull over if you’re on the freeway, it makes it more difficult to answer a baby’s plea for a potty break. It helps to give him a chance to pee right before you get in the car and right after you get to your destination. That is where the “potty-on-the-go” comes in handy if you don’t have a nearby bush handy.

More potty training stories to come….