failure to void! . . in the pot, that is.
we had nothing but misses today. 
day nine April 8, 2008
i don’t know if all this popping success is making our baby cranky, but we did have a really chill and easy baby. maybe all this time spent at the toilet has made hudseypoo needier? or again, maybe he’s just teething. so he woke earlier than normal today, 6 amish, and we put him on the toilet soon after nursing. put him on the toilet and got a nice load of poo. the rest of the day: i tried to hold him over the toilet at babies r us. the toilet was nasty, disgusting, dirty and holding my 22 lb-er was not conducive to creating a peaceful pooping environment. later i tried him in his new mini bjorn toilet. only to get him freaking out and trying to tumble out of it . . kind of dangerous considering he hasn’t figured out how to crawl yet, much less really spend much time on his tummy. he peed with no problem and then again freak out mode and no poop. everything that was so easy about this is not getting so easy anymore. am i constipating my son because he doesn’t want to poop unless on a toilet now? i probably just have higher expectations now .. so maybe it isn’t that bad. in nine days, i have only had two misses, only changed a poopy diaper twice!
day eight April 7, 2008
today was what i would call day of melt downs. it’s started off, poo-rrific. we got poop nice and early this morning. he usually wakes up at 7:30 goes back to sleep and wakes up around 9-10. so maybe i disrupted his nap cycle by getting him on the pooper so early. so first time on the toilet today, success. it’s true that you have to do this when you have the most time and can be really relaxed. i don’t seem to get poop, if i am slightly feeling rushed. he must sense that and it creates performance anxiety. so he missed his first nap of the day. his next nap was only for 45 minutes, subtle signs of meltdown to come apparent. he was still playing catch up by the time we reached mid-day. i tried putting him on the toilet before an afternoon bday party but i didn’t get anything because i am sure my vibe was not chill’axin enough. fast forward to party. he gets a short nap there, no more than 20 minutes. melt down building up from here. i tried to put him on the toilet and we have sobbing and wailing going on, all of which i am totally unfamiliar with. i am freaking out because intuitively? i feel like he wants to poop, but maybe it’s that i am not comfortable enough to relax in a toilet without our gear. we end up having a complete melt down, i put him on a trainer toilet at the party, he pees and is otherwise miserable. fast forward to home, daddy tries to put him on, nothing but serious, unfamiliar crying. we’re not sure what he wants and we’re not quite used to all this fussiness. i try again a little later get some poofs but overall did not get any poops.
- he has been surpressing his poop all day because timing and pooppurtinities weren’t there, he wants to go, but not in his diaper
- he’s was tired, lacking in naps
- he’s teething
- he knows what he wants now and is more vocal . . we’ve created a communicator but we still don’t understand him which leads to inevitable frustration
- all of the above
whatever, everything is okay . . we’re still 8 for 8. i got the only poop he pooped out today. tomorrow i’ll have to be on it first thing!
day seven April 5, 2008
after the mid morning nap, took him to the twoilet. we actually put his potty in our bathroom this time, normally we always did it in the bathroom by his nursery. there is less distraction in this toilet and i wondered if the change of scenery would affect him. he peed and then had a little floater. seems like he knows to instantly pee once put on it. i will say that we aren’t so hard core, that we’re trying to go diaper-free or that we think we can catch every pee. i can’t really say that i can sense any communcation about peeing . . but putting him on the toilet is starting to cause him to pee once situated on the toilet. today was not as much as he has pooped so it was just a little. the rest of the day i felt off, kept thinking he needed to poop and my instincts seemed off. he seemed more cranky than normal today. i started to wonder if he was more cranky when we didn’t catch his communication. i also think that changing his elimination habits is also affecting his personality . . i mean, it does mean that he’s more mature for having these milestones on the toilet. i wonder if when we don’t understand him if it frustrates him. if we put him on the toilet when he doesn’t have to, if it frustrates him too. i put him on the toilet before feeding him and i felt disappointed because he didn’t have to go. he ended up taking a nap and then we got ready to go for a walk. during our hike he was pretty happy, i was chatting away with a girlfriend as we neared the end of the hike. all of a sudden he broke out in c r a n k y. i had been checking his diaper all day b/c i didn’t have the sense that i was on today and when i checked there was poop. i carried him to the car to change him and what happened was quite new. he was quite upset at a diaper changing. really, this was only the 2nd #2 diaper changing in seven days. he wasn’t liking this. he was changing, he was over sitting in any poop, even in the time it took me to get a diaper and change him was not quick enough. have we created a monster? are things going to start getting harder? i didn’t get it right for the rest of the day. gave him a bath, put him on the toilet. i got pee. but not much else. still i feel good. my first goal was to just get him to poop once ever. so far, i have gotten some form of poop at least once a day. today, was the least that i had gotten. i also have to mention that things were so off today, it seemed i was breastfeeding more than he was taking to any solids. now it’s getting serious and i want to start considering getting cloth diapers.
i want to stick to this, but running around during the day can add strain to the intuitive part of it all. today was the first day, i felt that it was time consuming. actually, today was the first day, (saturday) that i didn’t have much to do . . maybe i was trying to hard?
day five April 3, 2008
we felt like pros now. and oddly enough, it almost seemed like hudseypoo was waiting for us now. he knew what to do and he knew he didn’t want to poop on himself anymore. still, there was the fear, that we would have a bad day and it would not go as planned and our lucky streak would end. i think my husband tried him on the toilet mid morning. around lunch time we found him highly irritable and come to find, we missed our poopportunity and we had poop, in the diaper. it was sad that we missed it, but we initially were only really trying to catch the afternoon, dinnertime poop.
later that afternoon, we had guests over. during dinner, we pulled Hudseypoo off the highchair to put him on thet toilet. he didn’t go because he could hear the party ensueing in the kitchen and the concentration just wasn’t there. not much later, we had success and we were happy that we were still five days and running. anty’s up.
day four April 2, 2008
the term potty has probably evolved overtime. i just looked it up and it means, the place where defacation goes. i looked it up because i thought of potty as more of a verb; the action of a baby going poop or pee. maybe i have just been completely mad this whole time but i guess that’s what diapering and parenting taught me. mainstream society tells me that to ask your kid, “do you want to go potty?” sounds more like, “do you want to go and just go on yourself? more like, “i don’t plan on taking you anywhere to do it,” because i have been trained to teach you to “do it on yourself and then i change you” and then i go buy as many diapers as i can. just another shortcut in a society where everything is faster, easier, less self consuming (so that we can be fatter, sicker, and more self absorbed) think about this logically. why should we, who live in the United States of America, who have TOILETS abound think this is okay? THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES barely have this luxury that we call toilets, yet we don’t use them because we are a lazy society and putting a baby on a toilet would mean that diapers are useless. third world country people, obviously can’t afford disposable diapers, much less toilets but how odd that they don’t believe in letting their kids crap on themselves. they are simpler-minded but all the more sensible. sure, they have more time on their hands, but there are plenty of stay at home mom’s out there and if you are a stay at home mom, this is definitely something worth exploring. i can admit that i never in 100 million years thought i would buy into this crunchiness. but here i am , advocating that we be more like third world country people. whatever principles might have driven you to think breastfeeding is better are the same principles applied here, sorry, mama. i am no expert, but i picture the third world country people holding their babies , arms out and to let them poo. it seem uncivilized, but as it turns out, us diapering our kids is more uncivilized. who made it okay to dismiss this notion that babies should poop like the rest of us in a potty? anyways, my point is, this is day four (in a row!!) of my six and a half month old going to the potty to make poo poo. i can only equate the feeling of accomplishment and excitement to that of riding a wave the first time surfing. i know, deep, huh? when i started this on day one, i had not the slightest idea that we would be here day four believing in elimination communication, early potty training, and possibly having a diaper free baby. God willing, the consumerism gods had me buying everything under the sun for my son, but i will not let the big diaper companies take all my money too!!
day three April 1, 2008
now we were feeling a little competitive, 3 days in a row would be great, but was it possible? same time, same place, same patience and same result. we got poop.
today www.diaperfreebaby.org accepted my application to become a mentor! how excited was i? i emailed back, “this is so perfect for me, i am a little obsessed with my own bowel movements so becoming obsessed with my son’s just seems natural!!! no pun intended!”
day two March 31, 2008
with our newfound glory from day 1, we were excited but were not above thinking that it was a lucky day. we tried about the same time as day 1, in the afternoon at our about dinner time, 4-5ish. put him on the “twoilet” and voila, same thing happened. we had poop. it was great. such an accomplishment. this time required more patience and truly just sitting and waiting. especially waiting for him to get past all the roucous it took to run him onto the toilet. we would make grunting noises and faces. in hopes to get him to copy us and start doing some of his own straining. it worked.
i found www.diaperfreebaby.org. a wealth of information. i was looking for a mentor but there were none locally. i applied to become one despite my lack of experience, i already felt inner-committed to this early potty training plan.
day one March 30, 2008
it was pretty obvious when hudseypoo was making poo. but only when he started being able to sit up, so starting around 4-5 mos. instinctively , i found it to be very obvious. a good time for li’l guy to poop was when he was sitting upright in his high chair. (or the bumbo, eghw what a mess!) we knew our instincts were right on, because we always changed him soon after a poop. we hadn’t had an incidents of diaper rash really so that confirmed it even more that we were picking up on his cues pretty timely. i attribute this to my husband’s disdain for anything unsanitary (i’ll sometimes refer to him as Howard Hughes-ish, very ocd about cleanliness) and maybe my own ability to read people. turns out we make a great team. we just figured that sitting upright in his highchair was naturally similar to sitting on a toilet. so after a couple of times of obviously knowing he was pooping we couldn’t just stand idly around waiting for him to poop himself. actually, my husband first brought it up, “when we know he’s pooping we should just go hold him over the toilet.” i thought it was quite strange, but it made sense. my first natural reaction was to say, “that is ridiculous, who’s ever heard of such a thing?” he had said that his parents had him trained by 8 mos. preposterous! always ready to buy the next baby thing i was ready to go potty shopping! i noticed alot of people mentioning EC’ing. of course, i had to google it, i just knew i was going to find a whole world of people doing what we had just discovered. sure enough, of course, there is a whole movement similar to what breastfeeding was probably 5-8 years ago. immediately, i was intrigued. and immediately we were at babies r us. i think i even tried cradling him over the toilet. something that was later confirmed in some books that this was what you were supposed to do. how organic and NATURAL was our whole journey to this spot? well my husband howard hughes didn’t believe in having to clean up poop in a potty so the ever mature, Hudseypoo was already on the adult toilet with a trainer seat.
we held him up there not knowing what to expect. it was like two happy proud parents watching their kid at their first ballgame or something. we just sat there watching him, cheering him on and waiting, patiently. hudseypoo was loving it, looking around curiously, grabbing anything he could reach–the towel on the shower door, the toilet paper, kept looking back behind him, it was a whole new world. we had no idea what would happen but we thought it was just another fun bonding moment in anything. actually it happened pretty quickly, we heard a poof, followed by a splatter and then mama peeking between the potty trainer into the bowl. there was poop. we could NOT believe it. my husband and i were taking turns holding hudseypoo on the toilet because i was so busy trying to take pictures. i have to say the camera is a little distracting and i don’t really advise. i was really bummed i didn’t get any pictures of him red-faced and grunting. it really took him out of the zone so we didn’t want to disrupt his groove. anyways, we were all very daunted by what was happening because it was so brand new, and so unexpected. i must say, that i believe that hudseypoo probably had the biggest poop of his life sitting there for the first time on the toilet. makes sense, that with letting your poop free, you might just let more out!!
