Nathan tends to go long periods of time between poos. We are talking 10-12 days, and then when the poo comes it seems to be excreted over two days. Thus, in any fortnight we might have 12 days of just wet nappies, and then 2 days with big, messy poos. I’m quite surprised that our cloth nappies have contained these huge poos, but it is still messy cleaning up both the nappies and the baby after these events. Nathan obviously doesn’t like sitting around in so much poo, because he grizzles and lets us know that he needs a nappy change. He grunts and pushes for a while before the poo arrives, which got me thinking that if I’m quick enough I might be able to catch the poo in the toilet rather than in his nappy. This doesn’t seem such a foreign idea to me, given I know a couple of people who have used Elimination Communication (EC) to get their children out of nappies before their first birthday, and I experienced an entire country using this strategy when we travelled in China (with the exception of Shanghai, we saw disposable nappies there).

I have also started giving Nathan a lot more nappy free time. We used to give him a lot in Summer, but it’s been a bit cold lately so I had stopped. Nathan doesn’t really get nappy rash, but he does get a little redness every now and then and having nappy free time fixes that right up! So the heater has been turned on occasionally in order for nappy free time to continue throughout Winter.

Now, continuing along my train of thought, I figured that if he was getting all this nappy free time, then I may as well see if I can work out when he normally wees, and start making a ‘psss’ sound when he does so he would learn to associate the noise with weeing, and if I could get him to wee into the toilet (or bucket, which we currently use) then maybe I would have a few less wet nappies to deal with. And hopefully, with all this nappy free time, I would notice his big poo in the beginning stages and get him over the toilet quickly enough to catch it (this could end in tears!). Anyway, this was how I came to buy the book “Early Start Potty Training”, because I realised that I was starting on the road to EC (on a part time basis, which I believe is possible) and thought it might be an idea to read a bit about it.

The book was very interesting! It talked about the time frames in which other cultures toilet train their children, it talked about how we came to believe that babies are unable to control their bowels and bladders, and it also talked about the environmental impact of nappies (both disposable and cloth) and made the point that the earlier you toilet train your child the less washing/landfill is required. It had other statistics as well, saying that most children with on going toilet issues and bedwetting were toilet trained at an older age. It also said that we actually train our children to wee and poo in their nappies.

So, for about 10 days now I’ve been saying the ‘psss’ sound when Nathan wees…well, for the ones I see, anyway. At the start Nathan didn’t really know what was going on, and every time I said the noise he’d stop weeing. But he got used to it, and I got to learn that he generally wees half an hour after he wakes up from his nap (during which time I feed him). So I can now take him to the toilet and catch that wee there, which just means a dryer nappy for longer! First thing in the morning, though, he does a huge wee about 10 minutes after waking, and I’m now able to catch that one as well. I don’t know whether he’s holding it in now or whether I generally just changed his nappy after that first big wee, but his night nappies are now just a little damp in the mornings, instead of very wet!

And last night, after his last nap of the day and his subsequent feed, I held him over the bucket for him to do his wee, and the poo I had been waiting 11 days for arrived. I must say I have never seen so much poo come out of something so small. It was a long, skinny, snake of a poo followed by runnier stuff. I’m wondering if it was his 2 days worth of poos in one hit. Whatever it was, I was a lot easier to wash out the bucket than clean copious amounts of poo from a bare wriggling bottom, trying to keep his feet out of it and keep it off the change table at the same time. And even with the little squirt, it is still a messy procedure washing the poo off the nappy. So all in all, I’m actually very impressed with my little boy!

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 3rd, 2008 at 9:07 am and is filed under Nathan's first year. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.