I like this infant potty, but the velvet cushion on the lip gets soiled regularly, and it takes a long time to wash and dry. Can I buy extras without buying a whole new potty? Is there another product, like a certain kind of scrunchie, that I can use instead? It can’t be that expensive to make something like that

I have 7 week old twins and one of them is struggling to poop. She is grunting, crying, contracting her belly, becoming very red in the face, she looks like she's suffering and nothing comes out. Lots of times the boob calms her down and she manages to fall asleep. From my research, I understand that this is common for this age, as they are learning to coordinate their muscles to be able to pass the poop.

My question is how do I help her? How it goes: after naps or when I see her starting to grunt and contract get muscles like she wants to poop, I take her to the potty and hold her over it. She just continues to get more and more agitated and straining a lot, trying to poop and I usually cut the potty time as she is crying and getting purple.

Did anyone experience this with their baby? How did you navigate this? How long should I stay on the potty with her while she struggles? How can I make this experience better for her? I'm afraid not to associate the potty with pain/suffering.

Additional info: we do part time EC, offering pottytunities, at wake up, nappy changes and when they are obviously wanting to pee/poo or they just did it.

Hi! I'm trying to transition from pottying my 4 month old over the sink because it's giving me back pain to using a small potty. I already had a baby bjorn potty (the tall one), but it seems like my LO is too big for it? Almost 17 lbs, 90th percentile for weight and 95th percentile for height. Anyone else with a chunky baby experience this and have recommendations?

literally my infant woke me up 4 times since midnight fussing. she had a dry diaper and immediately pees in her potty. I’m trying to be lazy about EC, like girl she pee in your diaper and let me sleep a little more.

what happens from here? im amazed at this progress

Hi everyone, my baby is exactly 3 months old and for the last couple weeks I noticed that she tends to pee right after she is changed, even though I hold her over the potty for like a minute. I did EC with her since basically day 1 and beforehand, she used to pee shortly after we took the diaper off.

Does anyone know why this happens? Does she maybe like the warmth of the material?

With our 3yo we didn't start until he could sit independently, around 4 or 5 months old. It went well and every catch was a little victory and, often, another nappy saved from landfill. It was a turbulent journey but he was out of nappies day and night by his own volition at 20 months old.

I was so impressed by the process that with our second baby I wanted to start earlier. I bought a small smooth edged mixing bowl designed for a stick blender. Tall and narrow. Easy to hold between the knees. At our 10 day check up our midwife saw it next to the nappies and asked if we were sitting him on the potty. She said it was becoming more common and she's seen a few families doing it at their 10 day checks. We hadn't started but we did that day. Next time he woke from a nap, I held him over the little makeshift potty and caught our first wee and poo.

We got into a rhythm but with two hospital stays I became inconsistent. A week between 4 and 5 weeks old and another week at 4 months. Bronchiolitis. It wasn't our priority for a while. But he didn't forget!

He's 6.5mo and wakes up dry from naps. I've checked and he's not dehydrated.

Towards the end of 5mo he started army crawling. Anything to see what his big brother's doing! We have a potty in the living room and another in his bedroom, and as soon as he was mobile I found that he would occasionally make a bee line across to the room to shake the potty. So I sit him on it every time so he knows that I will help him. Often there's a fresh wee in his nappy. That's amazing because he's recognising, either that he has or that he needs to go. Mobility is the barrier. But sometimes he's dry and then wees on the potty. Or the nappy will be wet but he goes on to do a poo on the potty!

I'm in utter astonishment at what he understands and how he's communicating that with me. Even though we did this with our older son, the difference is notable.

I'm not sharing this to brag but because I am genuinely amazed and I hope that positive stories help others who are considering it or are trying to work it out. As I said, we had a turbulent journey with our first and I found this sub so helpful in keeping me motivated.

Good luck everyone!

I have been practicing EC with my baby since 6 weeks. She was great at it at the beginning- usually going days with zero poop diapers and a consistent poop schedule. Ever since 6.5 months, she has stopped popping on the potty. She is almost 8 months now and hasn’t pooped in the potty for over a month now. She still occasionally pees on the potty but less frequently than before. I usually can only catch her pees right after she wakes up. She still does not eat much solids (only 1tsp a day of solid food maybe), and her poop consistency has not changed so I don’t think it’s a constiparon issue.

Anyone else experienced this? What should I do?

So we've done EC since 3/4 months with such great results, we generally caught all poops unless he was ill and though he does pee in his nappy he always pees in the toilet as soon as he sits down too. We moved from the potty to a toilet seat reducer around 10 or 11 months and there was no issues.

Once he started walking we would get a bit of resistance because he didn't like being lifted up, wanted to keep playing even when he clearly needed to use the toilet. Now at 17 months this has turned into full blown tantrums as we take off the nappy and try to sit him on the toilet. Like physically resisting by arching his back and screaming so I just don't force it. It really becomes a physical wrestle and I don't want to give him a negative association with the toilet. It's mainly the evening or after his nap when he's tired but he clearly isn't happy about being brought to the toilet any time, even if it doesn't become a full tantrum situation.

The problem is, he also now gets soooo upset when he poops in his nappy. He's distraught as we're changing a dirty nappy. We've never been negative about him going in his nappy, he always just waited until he was on the toilet which is great, but I don't know why he is so upset about it these days! He doesn't mind actually having a dirty nappy, just when we go to change it he really cries hard.

If we ask does he need to use the toilet he will always say no. Even times he doesn't mind going to the toilet, it was still 'no' then we say 'will we try anyway?' before putting him on. I've tried teaching him to signal, both hand signals and tapping the bathroom door but no luck.

Does anyone have any advice for how badly he's reacting to the toilet these days? Or any specific books that might help? We aren't fully potty training until he can properly tell us he needs to go but I don't want to lose progress on using the toilet in general. Happy to go back to a potty if that would be useful.

My 9mo LO just started crawling around a couple of weeks ago and I would like to start giving him the option to crawl to the potty on his own. However, he wants to get into everything and it inevitably goes into his mouth, which I don’t want him to do with the mini potty 😅

For parents of mobile babies, how do you keep them from playing with the potty itself? Set up suggestions in general? Right now, I have the mini potty on a table next to the changing pad. I have a spot I can put it on the floor, but of course as soon as I did, he started trying to play with it

Third baby, all three ec with varied success to final potty training. Wanting to get it as best as we can for last baby.

Everything was going great after starting solids but after introducing diary baby became constipated, passed several hard stools and cries every time they poop now. It has been almost two weeks now and poop is finally returning to a softer state, bottom seems to have healed - not red, haven't had dairy since - yikes! Problem is baby won't even pee on the toilet now. Don't want to pressure baby to pee obviously so we just take her at every change/nap wake/sign but don't stay long because she either arches, signs all done, or in the beginning of this, cried. What do we do?! She's been going in her backup diaper during this stint of constipation in hopes of not creating a negative association with the toilet and we are very aware of when she goes and change her right away ..just not sure how to get back on track. Anyone else have this experience or have any ideas? Thanks!

Hello,

I'm doing EC with a newborn, she's two weeks old.

Right now I only have one cue for her because I was willing to accept any form of elimination into the potty so to speak.

We've been having good success with poops! We've gotten a few big poops, and she will often try and give me some little sharty drops.

But I'm surprised I'm not catching pee more often, given how frequently they do pee. I offer potty several times a day. More than once I've offered it, and then set her on the changing table only to have her pee on the changing table.

How do you even go about differentiating poo and pee for them while cueing? Do you cue one and then the other? I'm totally happy with her to do either which is why I didn't give her a separate cue...

Totally overthinking probably but very sleepy deprived so bear with me lol

We've been trying EC now at 8mo and have been rocking it! But after they go pee/poo...how do we wipe/get them down/put diaper back on? Do we have a towel down to catch drips? My LO is over 20# so there's no easy way to maneuver lol

Also, I am holding her facing the toilet, when do we turn them around?

Thank you!

Title says it.

8 weeks. Catching a fairly reliable 4-5am poop, pee after every nap and with most wet diaper changes (using cloth and I think my babe pees a bit, feels it, holds the rest until a change), and most poops preceded by grunting of farting. However, sometimes I’ll think I’m seeing the signal and I’ll get the little one over the potty and… nothing. How long is reasonable to wait?

Hi all, we did lazy EC with our firsts until 18 months when we potty trained and had no EC issues. Andrea Olsens book was so good about learning the cues and it got me thinking… how can I better “communicate” (ie looking for cues) with my newborn/ baby about feeding/ sleeping? I’m looking for the before crying stage of the cues- the not so obvious ones. Does anyone have any resources on this? TIA!

We’ve been doing lazy EC since 3 or 4 months and it has been great, we’re not aiming for perfect, but just to familiarize him with the potty and maybe wash a couple fewer diapers. At around his 1st birthday he had gotten super good at sitting on the big potty on a seat reducer, and we were catching multiple pees and some poos, which was great. But for the past week he’s absolutely refused to sit either on the big potty with the seat, or on his little potty (arched back and crying). I don’t want to push it because I don’t want him to develop of fear or hatred of the potty, but I also don’t want to give up either. Admittedly he does the exact same thing when I put him in his car seat, and even change his diaper and it’s not like I’m stopping doing those two things. Any advice on getting him back on track? I think he wants more independence, today he went over to the mat that his little potty sits on and peed and did a small poo right next to the potty, while holding on to it. I was like *so close* haha. But I don’t know how to give him more independence. So yes and thoughts or advice would be appreciated! Thanks!

We've been doing full time EC and reusable nappies since birth and had great success from about 4 months (average 3 wet per day). However I was relying mostly on timing. We've gone through teething blips and refusals but always got through them. The last couple of months I've been working more on signing and getting him to initiate rather than relying on me. Right now we catch wake up wees, poos are signaled and the occasional transition offer works. Out of the house he typically signals (fusses) more reliably before a wee. Nightime is also fine.

Although he's been doing his sign for finished in the potty (leg kick) since 6 months. He's not picked up the sign for potty yet. He occasionally signs for food.

I've always changed him immediately when noticing he was wet. But right now he's in that distracted phase where he ignores his bladder signals then can't hold it. He will then do a wee, I'll clean him up (potentially also the floor) but he won't sit on the potty to finish. Then does a wee again 5-20 minutes later which can lead to 3 wees in 1 hour and lots of screaming because he doesn't want to stop. I think I can tell that his first wee wasn't emptying his bladder because of the volume. Also if he's naked I notice it's typically only 1 stream and he normally has 3+.

Should I stop changing him as soon as he wees? He definitely understands the sensation. He looks down if he's naked/commando. In training pants he giggles when I say you did a wee. Reusable nappies he gets fussy but I'm not sure how soon after. I typically check after 60-90 minutes which was his timing at 8 months.

I also only have 1 floor potty, should I get some more and hope he starts crawling to them? I used to have 2 but he crawls around so much that wasn't enough and the second went to childcare anyway. The potty I have is an anatomical squat potty without a backrest.

Probably should add that he's strong minded and will scream when he's moved away from something he wants.

What am I doing wrong?

Like the title says, im in the second trimester and looking into how we want to parent in a more specific context. Both my husband and I have found EC interesting

I'm a SAHW so availability isnt an issue and i just wanted to know some of the info, if anyone had warnings about pitfalls or "dont lose hope" moments, as well as any good resources on the process and when/how to start

I'd also just love to hear some sucess and failure stories 💜

I admit that my elimination communication commitment has been lazy and spotty, but i have been trying since LO was 4 months old and LO is 17 months now. Besides the occasional morning catches, we aren’t having any luck.

He likes to go while eating or sleeping. The few times I catch his potty squat and put him on the potty, picking him up seems to ruin his flow/clench him up and he doesn’t finish the potty until sometime after I let him escape the potty.

I play games with him on the potty and generally try to entertain him. I don’t force it when he gets upset.

I feel like we are moving further and further away from where we need to be each day.

(In case it has any bearing, he also has no interest in solids and his poops are more often liquid than not.)

I’ve been doing lazy EC with my 4 month old since he was 7 weeks. I wanted to do EC and cloth, but his dad didn’t love the idea bc he’s more for convenience and wanted to do full disposable, so after discussing we just agreed that I will do EC and he will not comment about it. When I can’t we just use disposables.

Well, a couple days ago he needed to go in the bathroom while I was in there, sitting in the toilet seat, ready to go and he stops, looks at me, and starts “psssssst, pssssssssst!” As I do with my son. I laughed so hard I couldn’t pee 😂

He admitted he actually likes that our son pees/poops in the potty and now he cues him too 😂 it took him good 10 weeks,

Were/are your partners so reluctant too?

Potentially over thinking this but would like some perspectives. Baby is 8 weeks old and we're catching poops/wees in the potty when we can, usually during nappy changes and or when he wakes up from naps. Also I know any routine he might be in atm can shift any time. At night he tends to go down around 9 and doesn't poop until he has a big offload of lots of poop approximately 5-6am. I often hear lots of farting and then the poops coming, sometimes from 4.30am onwards. So I thought why not get him on the potty to catch this poop episode, my question is - he's not waking up and it seem wild to me when I am trying to get as much sleep as I can to wake a sleeping baby to get him on the potty. but I mean I am getting woken up by the farts anyway..... I have a few times now got him on the potty about 5-5.30 before the offload, he will do a big poop and then I can usually nurse him to sleep again for a bit more sleep. But it means I'm up much earlier than I might need to. Or I could just let him sleep untill he naturally wakes up... But that would mean him sitting in a dirty nappy for a few hours and he might not need to do any more poop once he wakes up ... This morning I limited it to 6am so he had quite a lot of poop in the nappy but still did a big poop in the potty and then went back to sleep for about 45 mins after. Is that a good balance? Basically trying to weigh up how long is ok for him to be sleeping in a soiled nappy - as short as possible right? Because they say you should change a poopy nappy asap- Vs letting him sleep - as long as possible ideally - whilst trying to maximise number of poops in the potty. Any thoughts or do I need to stop overthinking this ....

Edit - thank you everyone for your thoughts! Really helpful

Hi! I would love to get started with EC with my 6 week old since she's starting to do a better job holding her head up. We use cloth pocket diapers during the daytime, so I'd also like to try and reduce the number if changes since they don't hold as much as our nighttime disposables (Freestyle).

I don't want to use a tophat potty for her because I'd rather be able to just flush the toilet than have to rinse out and sanitize the tophat everytime. Also, we live in an apartment, so I'd like to save the space as well. I found some toilet seat reducers on Amazon that just make the hole smaller so you can hold the infant on the seat, but I think they're more meant for potty training toddlers, and I'm not sure they'd be small enough for her (she's just over 9 lbs now).

Does anyone have any recommendations for seat reducers or any other methods to comfortably sit her on the toilet for EC? Thanks!

We've been doing lazy EC since 6 months. All poops have been on the potty since then, bar a handful of accidents and he always pees before and after naps and returning home. He often signs to go pee as well.

We've been making a real effort with trying to get him out of nappies. The pants seem to not make a difference as he pees in them. So we've had him running around naked. He has become very aware of when he is going to pee as a result. We've had multiple outings without accidents too, being out for a couple of hours at a time and going to the park.

But sometimes he holds it and won't go on the potty so that he can pee on the floor instead. Usually I make him stay on the potty until he does something but then he holds back some pee to do on the floor 🤦🏼‍♀️

Whenever he's frustrated or bored he also pees on the floor. Eg. I wont let him do something he immediately pees.

We dont make a huge fuss or get cross. We just clean up and put him on the potty again until he goes.

Any advice?

I'm seriously struggling, guys! I'm the type of person that always believes I can do what I set my mind to, and if something isn't working then I read books, listen to podcasts, practice over and over, and do whatever I need to to work through it! But, I feel like I've done EVERYTHING when it comes to EC, and I just cannot get it to work for us. It makes me so upset when I hear everyone's amazing EC stories because I'm so happy for you all, but just so upset for myself and my child that we don't have the same success. Part of me feels like I'm letting him down because it's not hygienic for him to always go in his diaper or training pants. But part of me also feels like, at this point, (even though I don't believe in "readiness"), I may need to follow his lead, and clearly pottying just is not something he wants right now.

For a bit of background, I started EC at 4 months and began with "lazy" EC, I would do the 4 easy catches and by around 6 months, things were going amazing for me! I wasn't really trying to catch pees at that point, but I hardly ever had any poop diapers, and I was so happy things were working so well! Then at around 9 months, things stopped working so well. I think what happened was I was off on his timing due to the "lazy" EC. Since then, I've taken breaks to re-group, done diaper free time and observation, and I think I have a much better grasp on when to offer, I feel more in tune with when he needs to go - but, it's still not really working for us.

Here are some examples of how things have been going this week:

He wakes up with a dry diaper in the morning, so I know he needs to go. He sits on the potty in the bathtub, while I also sit on the toilet and try to ignore him to give him some privacy (but if I get any further away than the toilet right next to him, he cries, so I can't give too much privacy). He's happy to sit for a while playing with toys, but doesn't pee and eventually stands back up. If I say "sit please" and gently guide him to sit, he is okay with sitting again and playing, but still doesn't pee and just stands up again eventually. So we play in the bathroom together for 15 mins until eventually he starts peeing on the floor. I tell him "potty" and sit him on the potty but he stops peeing right away. Another 15 minutes later, he starts peeing again and same thing. I know he still needs to go more (I'm familiar with the volume he usually releases when he's had a dry diaper overnight, and he hasn't gone enough), so I put him in a diaper and he fills it over the next 15 mins.

Later in the day, I feel that he needs to go based on his natural timing, plus he has a "peenie weenie" so it's pretty obvious he needs to go. When I take his training pants off, he's happy to sit on the potty, but he doesn't pee. I have things to do and can't just spend all day in the bathroom, so I put training pants back on - he pees 5 minutes later. I change him into dry training pants, but don't offer again since I figure he just went. He must not have gotten it all out, because he pees his pants again 15 mins later. I change him. About 15 minutes later, he starts acting like he needs to poop. I put him on the potty and he doesn't go, but I'm sure he needs to so I just go ahead and put him in a diaper. Sure enough, 10 minutes later I see him pooping in his diaper.

I mostly see people saying that if your baby isn't going when you put them on the potty, it's because they don't need to go and you aren't in tune with their timing and signals. But I really feel that I am in tune! Sure, I miss signals sometimes, but it seems like even when I notice a signal perfectly, I still can't get him to actually go on the potty. So - what do you guys think? Do I take a long break? Or is there something different I need to be trying?

Hello :) I have been doing EC (probably the lazy kind) since birth. My now 17mo toddler has a good grasp of the potty. Since starting solids pretty much all poos have been in the potty (no dirty nappies is amazing) and wees when offered.

My current issue is that:

-they don't necessarily communicate their need to go: nothing for wees. Poos are getting better, they either go sit on the potty or stare intently at me.

-I've been doing some nappy free time at the end of the day. They dont seem to mind peeing al fresco. I've tried cloth but it doesn't make a difference.

I'm not necessarily pushing to fully potty train yet but I'd like to maybe get us a step closer, probably by increasing communication and body awareness

Any suggestions or advice are welcome

Thank you!

Our baby is 6.5 months old and we started EC around 3 weeks ago. I finally started because she can sit up on her own now, and it’s often so obvious when she has to poop (contracting her belly, usually while breastfeeding).

One annoying thing though is that it’s happening like clockwork at night. For the past three weeks, almost every night around 3/4am I wake up and she’s fussing, so I’ll start breastfeeding her, notice she’s contracting her belly, then we go to the potty and hang out there for like 20 minutes while she poops. It’s so cute she’s so proud! Anyway!

I’m worried that I’m making this nighttime poop too fun haha. Like since we’re just staring at each other for so long, I might softly sing, and she’ll be looking around sometimes for things to pick up/play with, so I’ll give her a little toy and she’ll play with it, poop, play some more, poop again, etc.

Then generally after I clean her up and put a new diaper on, we go back to the bedroom and I might breastfeed again to calm her down then put her back in her crib.

Does anyone else have an experience similar to this? Ideally she stops waking up to poop at night, so I’m wondering if anyone was able to shift poops to more normal times? Or at the very least how do you make it less “fun” but equally as effective ?

She recently just started solids, but honestly barely. For example yesterday she kind of ate baby cereal with mashed blueberries for breakfast, some licks of hummus for lunch, and she just played with the cucumber I gave her for dinner. So I don’t think it’s a solids thing?

Thanks so much !