Update on Elimination Communication

Over a year ago, I started reading about Diaper Free Baby and elimination communication.  I was sold on the idea that if I just put some effort into it that Lily would be effectively using the potty with few accidents by a year old.  Eighteen months max.  Psssh.  Potty train my infant.  NO PROBLEM.  Hahahahahahahaha.

Lily had other ideas.

Let me tell you.  Lily. HATES. The potty.  Hates it.  She has hated it since she was a newborn.  I mean, come on.  Newborns don't know what is going on.  They are supposed to pee and poop anywhere and everywhere if left uncontained.  Hahahahahaha. Not this girl.

baby hand sign for potty

We start out with cuing her with a sound (grrr) and hand sign when we can tell she's eliminating.  Pooping, peeing, whatever.  When we pick up on her cues, I get her positioned over a potty.  The first day we try it out again, she's pretty chill about it.  Every day after that, she freaks the *bleep* out.  Freaks out.  Like I took away her favorite toy.  Or like I ran over her dog in the driveway.  This girl freaks out.  And then, she stops communicating that she has to go to the bathroom.  She stonewalls us.  I still cannot tell you to this day when she's going to pee.  And, if I pick up that she's going to poop and move her to any potty, she refuses to go to the bathroom.  I've used a ziplock container in between my legs, a baby bjorn portable potty, and the toilet.  Hold her like this.  Hold her like that. None of it matters.  But, you bet you if she's in a wet diaper that it's meltdown city.

So, we've gone through three rounds of cuing, picking up on her cues, putting her on the potty, meltdown city, and then she stop cuing, so we take a break for a few weeks.  In this last case, it's been a couple of months.   I thought that maybe when it got warmer, I'd put her out on a towel and observe her pee cues.  But that just seems like so much work.  Too messy.  I don't know what my other options are.  Lately, she's been giving us poop cues.  I thought that maybe when she could hold herself up without our assistance on the baby bjorn potty that I might try again then.

Over the weekend, she started picking up on the baby sign language, so I started giving her the poop cue again with a grrrr and potty hand sign.  That makes her smile a lot.  Maybe this positive association to the hand sign will help ease her into it.