Elimination Communication – Week 14 (17th Mar 09 – 24th Mar 09)

I started ECing outside with Darius on Friday 27th Feb 2009. ( Dar @ 7.5 months)

Week 14 ECing

• Signal his need to pee by suddenly giving a small cry in the middle of an activity.
• Is staying dry for feeds now most of the time if we pee him before. Only occasional lapse.
• We are peeing him directly over the toilet bowl, only occasionally using the sink, if he’s distracted.
• Still misses during some naps but he’s mostly dry and can be dry for 2hrs.
• We started putting him in Bumwear cloth diaper when we bring him out for long trips, peeing him over the toilet bowl when we reached a destination, after he wakes from a nap, or if he appears edgy and complaining.
• Night-time elimination is pretty successful now with him waking up once near midnight or at 1plus, sometimes at 3plus again and lasting until 6plus. About 3-5hours gap.
• He’s still pooing in the potty every morning and sometimes, will signal for another poo during the day by becoming distressed or agitated. Still trying to read this signs as we often thought he just want to pee and caught his poo instead over the toilet bowl.

Doing EC outside of home

We started doing ECing outside of home by first practising it at his grandparents’ houses. We have been taking Darius to pee while he’s there for two hours.

What we did:

• On arrival, pee him in the toilet first because he travelled from one place to another.
• When he makes complaining noises, we take him to pee immediately.
• When he feed, let him pee into the cloth diaper, then change it.

Because of this, he is much happier now at their households and doesn’t cry for no reason now. So it might not be ‘stranger anxiety’ afterall but just a need for elimination.

Progress to shopping malls

With confidence, we decided to put him in cloth diapers and ventured outside.

So we tried it out using:

• No 1 choice – The parent’s room toilet. Some shopping malls have them for parents to bring their children to pee or to push in with the stroller. The sink is very long and wide for diaper changing and the toilet bowl is children size.
• No 2 choice – The handicapped toilet where we’ll all go in with the stroller, and pee him over the sink or the toilet bowl.
• The Gent’s cubicle where hubby brought him to pee.
• Fastfood outlet’s toilet where hubby brought him to pee
• Handicapped toilet in the Ladies, if I can choose because it’s wider and there’s a sink to wash him or a baby changing table for him to stand on while I dress him.
• Last choice- The Ladies’ cubicle where I brought him to pee (only sometimes because in some places, there’s always a queue and we can’t wait!)

When to pee:

• On arrival
• After a nap
• Whenever he complains while seated in the stroller and it has been sometime after the last pee. (like 50mins or 1hour)
• 20-30mins after a feed if he didn’t pee during the feed
• When we ourselves have the urge to use the toilet and it has been sometime after the last pee. For convenience that we don’t need to walk all the way for toilet again, we will pee him first then relieve ourselves later.
• Before leaving the place, if it’s a long trip, then we’ll bring him to the toilet again.

The results:

- We have been successful with most of the pees and needed only one or two diaper changes (we change once it’s wet) even if it’s a long day.

- If it’s a short trip for two three hours, we could even come back with the same cloth diaper dry!

- Since we started doing ECing outside, he could happily sit in his stroller for a long time and doesn’t cry to be carried all the time now. We can now enjoy our meals while he sit in it playing by himself. I guess it’s because cloth is just so comfortable than paper diapers!

-We still use disposables sometimes when we ran out of cloth diapers because we are nowhere near a restroom or we are in the middle of a purchase and can’t EC him.