Infant potty learning: not for everyone

Elimination communication is one of those ideas that seems great in theory, but just didn’t work for me in practice.

While I have easily learnt the signs of when my baby goes, I have rarely been able to know before the event, meaning I can clean up and change quickly but don’t tend to ‘catch’ anything.

Providing potty opportunities seemed easy enough, and I even managed to have some catches, however I found the process a little tedious and kinda boring. I felt that providing potty opportunities simply took time from other more enjoyable time with my baby and didn’t seem to keep my baby any drier, nor did I go through less nappies.

The other problem I found was, because I was giving more nappy free time there was actually less play opportunities. This may sound illogical, but I wasn’t a fan of cleaning urine out of carpet so I kept the nappy free time to a tiled area, just not as much fun for bubs as on the carpet with his toys. I tried bringing toys to him, but it just wasn’t the same.

For me, the process was an additional challenge I didn’t need in an already challenging day. Lets face it, babies aren’t walks in the park, and adding toilet learning in was more than I needed to deal with in a day.

I can see how it works, and can imagine with perseverance elimination communication would be successful and much nicer for bubs, but I just didn’t have the patience to see it out and wasn’t really willing to do the hard yards to achieve success.

Elimination communication is just one aspect of natural parenting that didn’t work for me.

My attempt wasn’t a complete failure however, and I did learn a lot about my baby in the process. I learnt his rhythm and change his nappy accordingly, so he is now in a dry nappy longer; I know when he has gone so can change him quickly and he isn’t left in a dirty nappy long; and I continue to tell him what he is doing when he goes during nappy free time.

I may pick back up elimination communication later, but for now I will settle for maintaining the bits of it that did work for me.

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