All about EC
For those of you that follow my twitter, you would have seen me commend Damian on performing EC so well: Damian doing awesome ec. Didnt wet or poo a diaper all night. Even went in the potty.
Elimination Communication (EC for short) is a method of communicating with your baby about when he needs to go potty. It’s not potty training, it’s about recognizing the signals he gives you when he needs to poo or pee. Just like he gives a signal when he’s hungry (such as licking his lips, putting his fist in his mouth, or rooting), he gives very clear signals that he needs to go potty (grunting, tensing his legs, fussing a bit). If you learn to watch for these signals, you can help him go in the potty or wherever else you want him to go. Babies catch on to this very quickly - they do not like sitting in their own waste, and if they learn that you will help them not sit in their own waste they get very good at telling you they need to go. It’s about trust and communication.
From the beginning, Damian has been very good about letting us know when he needed to poo. Whenever we noticed that he needed to, we would take off his diaper and let him relieve himself on the open diaper on the changing table. There has been very few times that he has gone in the diaper directly. As far as going pee though, his signals have been much more discreet, so most of the time he would pee in his diaper. But last night, we hit a milestone. Not once did he pee in his diaper. He has learned to become more vocal about his signal that he needs to pee. All 3 times he woke up, he was dry, and when I encouraged him to go (by cuing him with noises such as ’ssssss’ for pee and ‘grrrrrrr’ for poo) he went.
Of course there is a long way to go on this, but I’m excited about how well he is doing. We won’t be out of diapers anytime soon, but we will be much sooner then most kids!
If you want more information on EC, I highly recommend the book The Diaper Free Baby by Christine Gross-loh.
Here are some other useful links on EC:
- Wikipedia: Elimination Communication
- Infant Potty Training
- newborn ec: nobody told me this would be so easy!