I'm doing my usual late night internet browsing while Zari sleeps. Here's an update on our daily sleeping & pottying happenings:
I nurse Zari down to bed at 7 pm and put her in the crib, which is next to our bed. Then it's dissertation writing time for a few hours until she wakes up around 11-11:30 pm. I potty her and nurse her back down to sleep. She stays in our king-size bed the rest of the night. She wakes up maybe twice more during the night to nurse, and then she's up for good around 7 am, sometimes later if it's overcast outside. I'd like to encourage her to sleep longer stretches and nurse a bit less at night, but when I try to put her back down without nursing, she gets very distressed and signs "nurse, nurse, nurse." How can I say no?
On to pottying, diapering, and elimination communication: Zari has been wearing size M Chloe Toes AIOs since December. They supposedly fit 14-28 lbs, but I kept her in size S until she was over 20 lbs. This new set (18 total) are plain white and made out of bamboo velour. I didn't have time to make fancy Canadian diaper or dalmatian designs like my first two sets. I bought a pack of disposables to use when I was in California last week, my 3rd pack since she's been born. (One pack was for newborn meconium and the other for when we were in France last summer and it was so cold & rainy that her diapers took a few days to dry).
Zari can totally control her elimination, and she knows exactly what the potty sign and sound (psssssss) mean. The biggest challenge right now is convincing her to sit down and relax for long enough to pee. She has started making the potty sign when she starts peeing. Oh, and sticking her hand in her pee while she's going and giving me a huge smile. I figure it won't hurt her and we can always wash her hands afterward. She's almost always dry through the night if I potty her once during the night. Poops are a bit more on-and-off; if I see her squat and grunt I'll bring her to the potty but often she's already done by time we get there.
We had lots of luck with the boredom issue once Leif fell in love with books (around a year). Now he will happily sit on the potty for 20 minutes (!!) reading and talking to himself.
ReplyDeleteIf there is something she loves to do, maybe she'll be enticed to sit?
Thanks for tellingus all about dear little Zari! I think the EC sounds so neat, do you think you would be able or interested in doing that if you had a bunch of older kids and soent your days out and about the town or is it more of a Baby-and-Mommy are home most days kind of a thing?
ReplyDeleteIt is so cute to think of her signing nurse-nurse-nurse, and I dont think nursing 2 to 4 times a night is too bad at all for co-sleeping! If my new baby is a cuddly-snuggly type (and not a crawl out the door lick the electrical sockets, dissasemble the bed, poke mommys eyes out, jump on daddys throat type) of baby, then we look forward to long time bed sharing! :)
I think EC works fine out & about. Actually, probably better for us, because Zari tends to hold her pee a lot longer when we're out doing fun things, so when I bring her to a restroom she goes very willingly and very quickly. I use cloth diapers as backup and that makes all the difference in my mind--no worries about needing to haul along a gazillion changes of clothes if you miss something.
ReplyDeleteI thought it worked well for baby #4 here, too, for the same reasons. My little one often held it for a long time when out and about. I cloth diapered all of them and the little one was the only one where I did any deliberate kind of EC (although, looking back I was using parts of it with all of them.) We went to Disney world when she was 16 mos and we took a pack of disposables with since we wouldn't have laundry facilities. I think we used about 15 diapers the whole week as she happily peed in every new potty. This might depend on personality, though - my boys were both more pee every 20 minute types who tended to get very engaged in things they were doing and didn't seem to mind as much being wet as my girls. I think it might have been harder with them. Really, since EC is about learning your child's cues and preferences, not so much about catching every elimination, you can be as involved as you have time for.
ReplyDeleteOkay, maybe you have some pointers for me? We use cloth as backup and although M (10 mo) has several wet diapers throughout the day, she also uses the potty beautifully for peeing, like 90% of the time. But for the past few months since we had to switch from holding her over the toilet (and now that she has more solid poop) to sitting on the potty, she pooped there maybe 3 or 4 times? I'm pretty sure she waits patiently 'till I leave her alone with that darn potty and finds a moment of 'privacy' (when I'm least suspecting!) and that's when she poops. I've taken to eavesdropping for grunting or going over for a stealth buttsniff whenever she plays contentedly alone :) but it's always a miss... I can't figure her out!! What gives?
ReplyDeleteNo words of wisdom for the pooping, since I have rarely caught one in the past few months. I'm always a tad too late! Luckily they fall right off the diaper into the toilet, so there's minimal cleanup involved. I think it's harder for poop because you can't release it voluntarily on cue like you can with pee.
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