Yes, my 9 month old uses the potty

The photo above was not a setup just so we could all have a good laugh. The camera happened to be in the bathroom from taking bath pictures the previous night (see below) and I was finally able to document Dahlia on the big potty during one of the 10-15 times a day she is on it.

Why is a 9 month old baby sitting happily on a potty? you may be asking yourself? Let me start from the beginning...many years ago I saw a newspaper article on something called Elimination Communication (EC) with an adorable photo like the one you see above. I had a good chuckle at how silly the baby looked and how ridiculous I thought the whole thing was. Seriously, who does that? And why? Well, now we do it, and we do it because Dahlia has made it clear that it is what she wants. We came to that conclusion in a round about way, but those in our family who have spent much time with her recently can attest that we aren't crazy.

It all started because Dahlia has always been kind of a super pee-er, especially at night. Most nights, she was soaking through all of the various cloth diapers we tried on her, and even many types of disposables. One desperate evening when she was about 6 months, in an attempt to avoid soaking our sheets again, I thought if she could put just one pee in the potty, it would be one less in my bed. I held her little naked buns over the toilet and she immediately peed! I tried again an hour later and she did it again. The next day, I got the little potty seat she is on in the picture and started putting her on it every time her diaper was off for a change, and she peed or poo'd almost every time! Now, after a few months of practice, she probably only pees in her diaper about a third of the time, and I haven't washed a poo diaper in a few weeks. If we remember to put her on the potty at each transition (arriving home, just before leaving, before and after eating, etc.) she will most likely be dry, and she definitely prefers to be dry.

The most exciting part of all of this is how it has changed our nights for the better. Dahlia's typical waking pattern used to go something like this: sleep 3-4 hours, then 2, then 1, then up every 15 minutes until morning, all of which were times that I tried to nurse her back to sleep with varying success. It was frustrating and exhausting to say the least. I was describing this pattern to a woman I know who has been pottying her kids since birth (a full-time EC family) and she thought Dahlia was probably waking because she had to pee, not because she was hungry. WHAT? That couldn't be. She was a night-time soaker and a super frequent nurser, how could this be? That night (three weeks ago) I checked her diaper after the first waking and it was dry...I took her to the potty...she peed...then she went right back to sleep. The same thing happened again 4 hours later with a very brief nursing break added in. We have since had very consistent 4 hour blocks of sleep with potty breaks between. Hallelujah! Dahlia hasn't had a wet diaper in the night for three weeks. It made so much sense that you would wake up after shorter and shorter intervals if you what you needed was to pee and someone was forcing you to drink something. Who would have thought.

Well, that's the latest around here. Now if you see us running to the bathroom in your house with a half-naked baby, you'll know why.

And a bath picture for good measure.