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Poopblogging.

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2 comments on Poopblogging.

(Also known as the seedy underbelly of mommyblogging.  Read a mommyblog, and sooner or later, you have to read about poop.  And I’m practically certain I’ve used that post title before.)

I am most definitely not dogmatic about morally perfect infant poop management.  Do I sound like the sort of person who would insist on going diaper-free, or using elimination communication (EC), or practicing natural infant hygiene (take your pick which trendy term to use; it means "hold your baby over a potty and make a sssss noise").   OK, we do this some, but the truth is that we use whatever works at the moment.  Cloth diapers?  Yes, lots.  Disposables?  Frequently, especially when traveling or when somebody’s sick.  Peeing-on-cue?  Yes, some of that too. At least with the latter two kids.  Therein lies the point of this post.

Three kids are still anecdotes, not data.  Nevertheless here are my anecdotes, and I couldn’t get the nice little table to work, so you get two ordered lists instead.

Elimination communication:

  1. Never did any at all, just cloth diapers. 
  2. Made half-hearted attempt to teach peeing on cue, got lazy and quit about age 9 months, kept the potties around though, mostly used cloth diapers
  3. Made half-hearted attempt to teach peeing on cue, got lazy and quit about age 6 months, kept the potties around though, used about 75% cloth and 25% paper diapers

Age kids became interested in using the toilet:

  1. Nearly 3 years old
  2. 18 months old (and was completely toilet independent by age 2)
  3. 17 months old (i.e., now.  Wish me luck, we’re going with it)

What I’m thinking is that a half-hearted attempt at teaching kids to pee on cue might pay off later on.    Because we only sort-of practiced it, "elimination communication"  saved us 10% of diapers, at most, while we were actively choosing it while those babies were young.  Ten percent is not much of an improvement on landfill space or water-heating energy.  But… if it’s the early practice in peeing-on-cue that made the difference between toilet training beginning to succeed at 18 months old, and toilet training beginning to succeed at 34 months old… well, that’s a lot of diapers.  That does make a difference. 

I wish I could say that it was all part of my plan, the half-hearted EC’ing, as the Slacker Mom’s Method of Toilet Training, but I’m afraid that I stumbled across it while I was, you know, looking for the easy way to do stuff.

Of course, it’s also possible that the presence of older siblings had something to do with it.   Or maybe I’m just getting better at this as I go along.  (Yeah, that must be it.)

Comments

2 responses to “Poopblogging.”

  1. Amy F Avatar
    Amy F

    Good time for me to see this post. With kid #1, I heard about EC and tried to capitalize on times when he was interested in the potty. Around nine months, I made a lot of attempts to offer the potty for about a week and caught a few, but not enough to keep with it. While very pregnant with #2 (#1 was 21-24 months), I brought him to the potty whenever I used it (a lot), and had a couple no-diapers-peed-in day, but generally just caught that first pee of the day and maybe another one. When the baby came, the desire to bring him to the potty died and I didn’t bother trying until he was 30 months. 4 days of underwear and a million changes of clothes later, I gave up and waited for him to tell me he had to pee. He decided to potty train at 35 months, in the coldest February of my memory.
    For #2, we’ve EC’ed since he was about a month old. I wasn’t ever into diaper-free time, just frequent potty offerings. He also peed 30 times a day (I counted now and then) for his first year. He’s now 22 months and in the past two days, I’ve changed 2 poopy diapers but all his pee has gone into potties (and he told me as he was pooping). We’ve probably caught 1/3-1/2 his pee since he was 18 months. I’m starting to feel hopeful that he could be out of diapers by summer, about 9 months before his brother. With #1, I changed him every 2-3 hours, when his diaper was soaked. With #2, he very rarely sat in a wet diaper more than a couple minutes. We exclusively use cloth, so they’d feel the wetness. I probably changed twice as many diapers with #2 in his first year because he peed so often, but it looks like we may cut a year off the latter end. I’d probably do the same thing with a #3 as I have with #2.

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  2. mandamum Avatar
    mandamum

    I think it’s not just about the teaching to pee on cue but also about assisting your child in maintaining awareness, which I guess is built into choosing to pee on cue. Instead of rediscovering awareness when toileting is introduced, the child already has it, and can just use this awareness once they get to that 18mo age. There is also the “use it or lose it” aspect of muscles involved, and even a little use goes a long way!
    Three children may not a data set make, but there is a new study that just came out, I think in December? that compares age of completion of training for various approaches–I don’t remember the journal, but I think author Laurie Boucke was involved, along with various researchers. Would be interesting reading.

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