Elimination Communication, Part III

… continued from yesterday.

Once we got the hang of reading her body cues and taking her in time, we really rode the EC hay ride. This was what started our golden period. Nothing could stop us. It was a beautiful dance between nursing toileting and sleeping. I really could see the benefits of the communication we had. We slipped from one of my daughter’s needs to the next and she hardly cried (for needs being met, that is. She did cry but that’s another story.) On top of that, we’d use 1-2 diapers a day and washed maybe 4 or 5 poopy diapers in 4 months! It was wonderful.

How did I go out with an EC baby?

The first of the two tally marks congratulating us for EC’ing out of the house was at the neighborhood baby store. We went for a sling class they were offering and at some point I asked bilingual papi to take her to the toilet. It was the first time. He took her and came back a couple of minutes later with a huge grin on his face. I didn’t need to ask. Our daughter just looked calm; like she just expected all of what we were doing to happen.

The second tally mark was after our local monthly La Leche League meeting. Every month we’d hang out around Lincoln Square with a friend and her son, go to lunch, nurse in public, take a baby to the bathroom- you know, the usual. This friend was really supportive of our doing EC. She was the one that encouraged me to take my daughter to the public bathroom (adding my 2nd tally mark to the “in public” section). When we’d be out in public (and especially when I’d be wearing my daughter in a carrier) I had a heightened awareness of her need to go. More often than not, she would make use of public bathrooms. The best bathrooms were always the ones that were a single stall (or family bathroom- they have these at the Boston airport, I now know) with a changing table in it. Without the changing table we’re lost since I still put diapers on bilingual baby. I guess once she’s walking and we’re using training pants we won’t be relying so much on the table, but until then I know where the changing tables are in town and how long it takes to get to each of them. Most of the time when I don’t know if I’ll find a changing table at a store/restaurant bathroom, I just put an All-in-One or a Pocket diaper (see The Diapers we use) on her to make it easier.

This built my confidence so much I stopped putting a diaper on my daughter. I knew when she’d go and I’d take her. So why diaper her? It was still winter so I’d put a long sleeve shirt, a sweater and some baby legs on her to keep her warm. I even bought her some EC pants. I’d have misses (when I’d miss her cue) when we had people over so in those cases I just diapered her and changed her as soon as I noticed it was wet. Then came teething. That really threw me for a loop. I read on the Mothering.com EC forum about how teething can cause misses. As could starting to crawl, learning to walk, learning to talk, and any other developmental stage. What was I supposed to do now?

Tomorrow read about dealing with a Potty Pause… Or, How we stumbled onto Part-time EC, joyfully…