We’ve moved. We’re really happy where we are, but life has changed a lot.

I’m working now. 3 days a week. The kids are big, and busy. my to do list is massive. sometimes i have a hard time believeing this is my life. not that i could imagine it different. It is crazy though.

so when it comes to the diaper free thing, it’s not really holding up like i thought it would. The actual putting him on the potty doesnt really happen much. For a while i was putting him on the potty in the am when i was having a shower. of course, he was going. (which always amazes me). he went on a run having a pee and poo first thing. it was so lovely. lately though, he ’s been sitting on the pot and “pushing” and out comes about a quarter size of pee.

at this point my goal is for him just to know what the potty is and feel comfortable on it.

my fingers are crossed.

We’ve been doing well over here, but with the move it’s making things hard. but yesterday i realized that he has started to tell me that he has to go. he sounds different. its not a cry, its just like he’s talking to me in sounds. everytime i put him on the pot after he talks to me, he goes. its amazing!! lets hope we keep this up. it’ll make this journey a lot easier!

I dont want to be. i’d rather be doing this full time. maybe super mama could, but i cant. i’m home a lot, but i’m home with sometimes 5 kids. at the very little i’m home with my own 3. thats a lot of kids to feed and get to the potty and maybe on a good day, do something productive with them. and on top of it i’m trying to ec my new babe. i truly believe in it, i think its an amazing thing, but i cant do it all the time. he’s in cloth and when he wakes up i pee him (if i’m home – because lief has decided that he loves to pee in the potty, not over the toilet. he’s gotten pretty vocal about that). I just dont think i can commit to more than that. i’m sure there are people who think i’m retarded to be thinking this. they probably think that i’m taking enough on and to give up already, or at the very least give myself a break. and maybe i should. but i want to do this. i want to do this for lief. i think it would be great for him. but i need to balence my life too. i’m crazy most of the time. i dont think that i can retain much information. i dont think that i can fuction to the outside world. but i’m doing my best, and i think that might have to mean that i’m just a part time ec-er. for now.

we’re doing pretty well with the ec, concindering that we’re in the middle of moving across the country. i’m happy if i catch 3 or 4 pee’s or poo’s a day. he goes so much right now that it’s hard to get every one. i’m sure i could, but with 2 (or 4 depending on the day) other kids running around it makes it challenging. when we move i’m hoping not to continue looking after other peoples kids. its not that i didnt enjoy it, but with 3 in the house now, and homeschooling caleb starting, it just seems like it’ll be too much work. and really, doing a bunch of things all at once for me, i might just be crap at all of them. so hopefully i’ll be able to find something else. (wish me luck!)

i’ll do my best to keep this up. we’re doing well though, and thats the main thing!

So we went away this past weekend. 6 hour car trip there and then back in 3 days. Thats hard for anyone I think, especially an ecing baby. It turns out that he doesnt really like being in a wet diaper, which I love most of the time. It does get a bit tricky though when you’re on a busy hwy.

I think for me, I just have to let it go. he is only 8 weeks old. it’s ok if he’s “off the wagon” for a couple of days. I’m worried that he’ll lose the instinct to tell me that he has to go. He did pretty well though. He would go in his potty when was able to him, and he’d tell me when he had to go. Even if I couldn’t put him on the potty.

Our night time/sleeping routine has changed a bit. Because he’s getting so much bigger he’s able to nurse laying down and not get burped after, which of course I love. He has started to poo at about 4am now though. I think it is just that he’s farting out all this gas and his mustard poops happen to be ready to come out. He’ll fuss and fuss though before this happens for about an hour or more, so he’s giving me lots of time, but i really really dont want to get up. To be honest, the thought doesnt even occur to me to get up. I just keep sticking my boob in his mouth hoping he’ll eat and sleep again. I would probably do this all day if given the chance. I have to start waking up a bit more to put him on the potty. My thought is that he’d stop fussing and sleep more if i just let him go. That is definatly the next leap that I have to make.

I’ll keep you posted on that. I think it’ll be one of the hardest steps to make, but usually those are the best ones.

I’ve been having some amazing days lately. I feel like I’m a very lucky person to be able to take this and run with it. Something I never imagined myself doing.

Thursday I had an Arbonne party. Some girlfriends, some wine and chat about fancy skincare. It was wonderful. It started at about 7pm. Which is, of course, the “witching hour” for small children. Lief usually isn’t that bad, but he definitely gets fussy when he’s tired. I passed him around to some friends, and by the time 730 came around he had had enough. So I bounced on the ball and soothed him with my pinky finger (for some reason he refuses a soother). It didn’t do anything, this little boy just yelled and yelled. I thought several times that he needed to poo, but quickly pushed that aside as there were many of my friends over and I wanted to stay in the party. but he continued, he persevered. Eventually I listened. I thought I’d just take him to the bedroom and see. At least he’d not be so distracting. I proceeded to get up and grab the potty, at which time Lief stopped crying. I got to the bedroom and put him on the potty and he poo’d. just like that. Its all he wanted to do and I finally listened. After that he fell asleep without much concern.

There have been other instances just like that and I have learned that I just have to listen to that little voice. The one that tells me pee or poo. The hardest time to do that is at night. We haven’t started ecing at night, and I’m not sure that I will, but that little voice rears its head in the wee hours of the night and taunts me sometimes.

It’s an amazing connection that I’m able to have with Lief and I cant wait to help it grow. It seems like each day it does and I treasure it.

~jen

So i’m going to take this opportunity to introduce myself. I’m a young 30ish stay at home mama. I have 3 kids whom i love with my whole heart, body and soul. I’m pretty crunchy, meaning i try to live lightly on the earth and help others to do so too. I try to lead by example. I’m not a great speller. I had advice for pretty much everything, but i try to give it in the nicest way possible. I’m not judgmental. I’m not a writer, and i dont plan on being one. I want to live by the seat of my pants, but i’m far too practical for that. I’m married to a man i met online – by accident. He challenges me in ways i never thought i could be, sometimes i like it, sometimes i done.

and of course, I use very little diapers.

I started learning about diaper free/elimination communication when I was pregnant with my daughter. That was 2 years ago. My husband got out a book from the library called “Diaper Free – the gentle wisdom of natural infant hygiene”. I wasn’t overly impressed. did he have no idea what it’s like having a newborn? Did he know of the lack of sleep? the constant pee-ing? and how to keep the house stuff up on top of it all? Well, I guess not, not if he expected me to do all that and try to not use diapers. I read the book a bit (but not a lot) to humour him. What I got from it was that you let your baby go around without a diaper and then you held him/her over a bucket when you thought they might pee or poo.

Silly me. we didn’t do any diaper free with Pait because I’m a stubborn scorpio and I had no intention of holding my baby over anything. She could pee in a diaper just like any other civilized child.

The more I heard about it, the more it intrigued me. I became a part of an online attachent parenting group and learned that there was families that practiced ec with their young ones. I belong to an online group of wonderful mamas and learned that some of those mamas do it. I saw a talk show that had a segment about diaper free. It just kept popping up in my world, and I was intrigued.

I planned on taking the diaper off Pait when she hit about a year. I thought it was best that way, because it would be easier for her to go when she was standing up, and I’d be able to notice her easier. yea, that didn’t work the way I thought it might. By the time they’re walking, they’re running away. good luck trying to notice anything!!

We continued potty learning with Paity. She had a bit of success, but by then I’d already trained her to go in her diaper. I taught her to not listen to her body, not learn to control it. Sometimes she got it, sometimes she didn’t. by the time she was 20 months old, I had cleaned up a lot of pees. She had lost interest, and I was 7 months pregnant. We put little miss Paity back into diapers, and we were both fine with that.

When Lief came along, we decided we were going to do this. I decided I wanted to do this.

I started to “cue” him whenever I’d change his diaper and we’d get the fountain of pee. I’d make a “psspsspsspss” noise when he’d pee. We had him in diapers for the first 5 weeks but then I noticed that he wasnt pee’ing when I’d change him anymore. I wasn’t getting the oppertunity to “cue” him. After talking to some other ecing mums, I took the next step. I started to put him on the potty after he’d wake up. the first time it worked, he pee’d. so i made the cueing sound. the second time, it worked again, and again, and again! it was amazing! I’ve been doing this for just over a week now, and I’m in love with it.

He’s peeing and pooing on the potty. Yesterday was our best day, he only used 3 diapers – cloth at that – in total.

You know what the best part is? Paity is going on the potty too. After no suggestions to her from us, she just started to ask to go. She doesn’t seem at all jealous, she just wants to go. The “pretty pink potty” has never been more used!

So this blog will be a cronicle of the ups and downs of ec, and our journey on the wave. Enjoy!

Jen