Elimination Communication ≠ Infant Pottytraining

I promised a friend I would write a post about this for her to see before her baby arrived – and that kiddo will be here in about a month or so! So I’m going to lay out my thoughts conversationally for the time being and hopefully this will serve as a helpful primer and record of (almost) a year of practicing elimination communication.

Let’s start with definitions: elimination communication (EC) is a process by which you learn to communicate with your child about their elimination needs, and then aid them in eliminating in the appropriate receptacle. It’s sometimes also called “infant-pottying” or “going diaper-free,” and I’m sure there are other terms used for it of which I am unaware.
I’ve noticed some people called it “infant potty-training” or “how to potty-train your baby,” and I heartily disagree with those names. If I have a thesis statement for this blogpost, it is this: elimination communication is not potty-training, it is parent-training. You, as the caretaker, are learning to read your baby’s signals and respond to them appropriately. A more appropriate term for what the child is achieving is “potty-awareness.”

There are lots of awesome resources for how to do EC. I’m not going to recommend a specific one because they all have different tones, and I feel like that matters a lot in how caretakers are able to absorb the information. My advice is search terms like “elimination communication” and “diaper free” and see what you find. Read around, get some different perspectives, and follow the specific tips that suit your family and preferences.

Going forward I’m going to answer what I imagine would be the initial questions someone might have for me about this. If I miss something you’re wondering about, please ask me in the comments section!

Do you use diapers?

Yes! We live busy, modern lives, and having a baby running around with no diaper on would be a little more mess than we want to clean up. However, we have made a concerted effort to make sure our daughter knows that a diaper is not the only place for her to eliminate. As often as possible we try to give her the option of eliminating in a toilet/potty. This means that we use fewer diapers, deal with less mess in our cloth diapers, and ideally, she will reach toilet independence earlier which will mean fewer diapers in the long run.

How does it work?

Babies give signals or cues when they have a need. Many caretakers are familiar with cues for hunger, sleepiness, or discomfort. What many people don’t know is that infants signal their discomfort BEFORE they pee or poop. Think about it – when your bladder is full, it’s not the most comfortable feeling in the world. While infants do not have the ability to hold in their pee for very long, they do have the ability from birth to relax their muscles to release pee. What that means is there is a gap between the time when they sense pee in their bladder making them uncomfortable and the moment they release it. For a very young infant, that gap won’t be very long. The older the child, the longer that gap can be. If you learn to understand their cues, then you can help them get out of their diaper and onto a potty before they release.

But does it really work?

Yes. 100% yes. I say this with the caveat that EC really is a practice. The more you do it, the better you get at it. Get out of practice because of a vacation, illness, developmental milestone or busy season, and it’s far less effective. We have been very part-time with our EC because we’ve had a pretty busy year. That being said, our daughter pees on the potty on a regular basis (and has done that since she was two weeks old), and since she started solid foods I would estimate 80-90% of her pooping happens on the potty, not in her diaper.

Practically what do you do?

There are a few different times that are best to give your baby the opportunity to potty.

1. When they first wake up – apparently hormones signal to the body that they are now awake, so any pee held during sleep can now be released. Many infants also poop shortly after waking.

2. Transitions – getting in the car? About to start a meal? Changing activities? Stop by the potty!

3. Diaper changes – Have you ever had the experience of your baby peeing the second their diaper comes off? It’s not the cold air. It’s that they don’t want to feel their pee right up against them. Give them a chance to pee in a potty instead of all over their changing pad.

4. When they cue you – as you get to know how your child expresses their need to eliminate, you can get them to the potty at exactly the right time.

When our daughter was very small, we would hold her up against our bodies over the sink or toilet. You can google “elimination communication holds” to see the best way to do it. Then we would make a little noise for her to associate with going to the bathroom. We would give it a few seconds, and if she eliminated, great! If not, the diaper goes back on and the day continues. Now that she’s older, she can sit on her little potty or on the big toilet with a seat reducer.

What does your husband think?

When I first presented the concept, he thought this was one of my crazy hippie ideas, but he wasn’t going to tell me I couldn’t do it. Then he saw her pee/poop in the potty and was sold. He now regularly comments on how happy he is that we’ve chosen to practice EC, especially now that most of her solids end up straight in the toilet. He feels like the results far outweigh our efforts.

What made you want to try EC?

When I first came across the idea, it appealed to me for several reasons. First of all, it seemed like a good way to reduce both the cost and environmental impact of using disposable diapers. I also liked the idea of using cloth diapers, and it seemed like it would make that easier (washing a wet cloth diaper is a totally different matter from washing a dirty one). Secondly, it felt like a wonderful way to respect my daughter and introduce her to good hygiene habits as early as possible. Sitting in human waste is gross, no matter how young or old you are. We live in a society that has dedicated massive resources to constructing an elaborate system to manage our waste. Helping show my daughter how she too can benefit from that system as early as possible made sense to me. Though we haven’t made the transition yet, I think her familiarity with eliminating somewhere other than her diaper will make the journey to potty independence easier and faster.

What’s challenging about it?

Learning to read your baby’s cues can be tough. Also, little babies pee ALL THE TIME. Or at least, they can pee every few minutes. It can feel frustrating if you’re trying to catch pees and just missing them. There have been moments when I’m changing wet diaper after wet diaper and I think, “If I wasn’t trying all this EC stuff I would be in the exact same position, but I also wouldn’t feel like I’m failing.” Then you see your little one pee or poop in the potty, and you realize that’s one less time that it’s happening in their diaper. It’s hard to describe, but for both my husband and I, the first time we saw her go in a potty, we were filled with enthusiasm and it made us want to keep going. If as a caretaker you can let go of ideals of perfection and be satisfied with however much time and energy you have, it will be a much better process.

Every time she has a developmental leap, it makes pottying tough for a little while. Crawling and walking especially. She is having so much fun moving around, she doesn’t want to pause and go to the potty. She is also a very independent little girl, so when we try to get her to sit still for a few moments she often resists. However if she senses that she needs the potty she will sit perfectly still until her business is done.

What gear do you need?

If you just want to try it out, you actually don’t need anything! You can hold your baby over the toilet, a sink, a bucket, or whatever receptacle you choose. Once we had achieved some measure of success with EC, we decided to buy this mini-potty and this toilet-seat reducer. We’ve been very happy with both. When she was young we cloth diapered with pre-folds from Osocozy and covers from Thirsties (there are lots of other products available, and we did almost no comparison, we just took some recommendations and tried to keep our costs low). Now that she’s older and on the move we have started using these pull-ups from Nicki’s Diapers and love them. At night and out of the house we use comopostable diapers from Dyper.com. They’re a little pricey, but costs about the same as using Pampers, and since we don’t use them exclusively it works for us. We’ve been very happy with both the tab diapers and the pull-ups.

Conclusion

I don’t have the time or energy to take my daughter to the potty 100% of the time. When we leave kids to eliminate in a diaper 100% of the time, we are essentially “diaper-training” them. We spend 2-3 years demonstrating to our children that this is the only option for elimination. Then we have to break down that conceptualization in order to potty-train them. Our daughter has known the potty is an option since she was two weeks old. As she gets older, has more control, and can communicate more, we will encourage her to use that option more and more often until diapers become a thing of the past.

So, what do you think? Have you heard about EC before? Did I miss any questions you might have had? Let me know in the comments!