#infantpottying

When you feel like dancing after your first dry night.

One dry nappy all night long. 

Does this mean my baby didn’t wee all night? No at all. 

Yes, it meant I got up a few times over night to take him to the potty when he needed to go.

No, he didn’t, nor has he ever slept through the night

No, it wasn’t hard because a lot of it was a lot of fortuitous things converging on one night to give us the ‘pottitunity’ for success and I am thankful. These wins however small or big really help keep the motivation strong when the nights are long :)

No, I don’t expect this to be the norm, we worked in sync and I am proud of us but expecting this to continue is setting myself up for disappointment. I’d rather celebrate my achievements as they occur and so should you whatever you’re doing. 

Parenting should come from a confident place in your soul not from shame or guilt (as hard as that can be at times).

Why I’m not fond of the term ‘Elimination Communication’

Pottying is pottying whether your child is a few months old or a few years old. In developed countries like the US, Canada, the UK and Australia we tend to wait until the age of 2.5 to 3 to begin potty ‘training’ and it’s in these same places that the term Elimination Communication seems predominantly to be used.

I balk at the usage because it seems a little elitist, a little pretentious and somewhat exclusive. It has a tendency to take pottying young children out of the 'norm’ and makes it an exclusive technique or method as though parents around the world for centuries haven’t been doing exactly this and simply considered it a part of the regular tasks they do to care for their baby.

Elimination Communication unlike infant pottying or even infant toilet training (if one must consider it training at all) doesn’t readily communicate what it actually is further adding to that sense of exclusivity. It needs to be explained to the 'uninitiated’ which is just plain unhelpful.

Like imagine for a moment that instead of referring to my baby as breastfed I instead turned up at my parent’s group and told everyone that I practice Exclusive Mammarian Sustenance on my baby. I didn’t mean for this to be a rant nor should semantics be a sticking point or divisive when it comes to baby care but I do feel that in order for us to normalise infant pottying we need to make it accessible.