there is no such thing as a potty pause

The title of this blog is a quote I read in some forum somewhere on EC. It was written by a mom who was quoting a friend of hers, a Chinese woman. EC, of course, is the normal practice in China, and this woman had no patience with the American practice of putting babies in diapers for so long. Naturally, the quote sparked quite a discussion on the forum, because "potty pauses" are considered extremely common among EC'ers. There are several times in a baby's developmental stage when they're generally expected: when they become mobile around six months, when they become more independent around 12 months, and of course around every developmental stage and tooth that comes in.

But I do think the anonymous quoted Chinese woman had a point, and it is this: people in this country who are trying to learn EC tend to be too quick to resort to diapers. We just don't know any other way, and even if your friends and family are supportive of EC, there's still a lot of pressure to use diapers. You can't go out in public, or even have friends over at your house, with a diaperless baby without getting some funny looks. (For what it's worth, I've never gone in public without a back-up diaper.) It's just too weird in our culture. And so I think that when EC doesn't seem to be working, the automatic response is to say it's a potty pause and to go back to diapers, instead of to say my baby is communicating something, and I need to figure out what.

It's similar to the issue of breastfeeding, actually. And I hope this won't offend anyone who had trouble breastfeeding, because I know I have a lot of friends who really wanted to, and tried their best, and did everything that was recommended, and still had to use formula. But I think there's a real dearth of resources in our culture who can offer other techniques, other options, other methods for breastfeeding. For many moms, they get a couple of options, and those don't work, and then they don't know what else to do. And it's the same thing with EC, only much more so. Nobody knows what else to try--nobody knows what the baby could need, or what they could be trying to communicate by not peeing in the way they used to, so we just give up temporarily and use diapers.

Anyway, so that Chinese woman has become my mantra when Anastasia won't pee on cue. There is no potty pause, I tell myself, so what is it that she needs or wants now?

It worked when she turned mobile at seven months--after a few days, I figured out that she wanted to pee in different locations, and that's worked ever since. But now at 15 months, she's had about a week of simply never telling me when she needs to pee and refusing to go every time I take her. I kept taking her, trying different locations and different positions, but it didn't help at all. Finally yesterday I just decided to have an EC-free day, because I was tired of trying. And then I had an idea.

I'd read in some forums about babies wanting more independence at this age. So I thought, why not? It's worth a try. This morning I took her nighttime diaper off and brought out her Baby Bjorn Little Potty, the tiny little potty that's small enough for babies this age to climb onto on their own. She hasn't used it much at all, because she doesn't like to be held over it. But I explained to her this morning that it's her own little potty, and if she needs to go potty, she can go sit on it all by herself and go. She seemed quite pleased. And about fifteen minutes later, she started reaching for the potty and trying to climb over Daddy's legs.

"You want the potty?" Matt asked. Anastasia nodded and signed potty. So we helped her walk over there. She held Matt's hand to climb onto it, and sure enough, then she peed! All by herself, she initiated going and went! I'm so excited.

So now it's been about an hour, and she's diaper-free again. We'll probably have several accidents today. But I don't mind. We're trying something new. I think she might actually be on her way to becoming an EC graduate.