I wish I could tell you that I had known what to do when my two-week old son – my first baby – was shrieking hysterically in my arms for what seemed like FOREVER. We’d been trying unsuccessfully to make bedtime happen for the past 45 minutes, and like any oblivious new parents, we were bopping around our bedroom shushing and swaying and patting and doing all the things we thought we were supposed to do, as my tiny son attempted to do a backflip out of my arms while waking up the entire house.
Frazzled, deafened, and exhausted, one of us had the wherewithal to comment, “I think he might need to poop...” And we continued the dance, throwing in a few baby bicycle kicks and some tummy massage to help things along, until finally, I felt the familiar burble under my hand and he filled his diaper as his body finally relaxed and the shrieks subsided.
I didn’t know then what I know now.
Fast forward – two years later. I’m just finishing nursing our newborn daughter in our bed upstairs, and I hear my son wake up: “Maaamaaaaa!” I hear him scream from his bedroom. I head down to check on him, and as I open his door I am hit with a wave so strong it could have knocked over a sailor. The unmistakable smell of a man-sized toddler poop is wafting from his direction, and I can see from the stain on his pajamas that the 5T Pull-up has not contained the situation.
It’s probably the 8th day in a row that we’ll be changing the sheets again after a sleepless night before we’ve even had our coffee – and we decide right then and there: it’s time for this little boy’s poop to go IN THE TOILET WHERE IT BELONGS.
I wish I could go back and lovingly pat myself on the shoulder and say “Oh honey, did you really think it was going to be that easy?”
It wasn’t until I was standing in the bathroom later that week trying to convince my naked two-year-old who VERY clearly had to poop to just sit on the toilet, as he was crying and BEGGING me to put his diaper BACK ON so that he could poop that I realized…we had taught him that this is where poop is supposed to go. We had inadvertently diaper-trained our son!
My daughter was five weeks old the day we started potty training our son. My partner Clay had one week left of family leave, and I had three before I would be returning to my full time job as a professional architect at just 8 weeks postpartum (oh USA, where oh where is the federal mandated family leave…how on earth do you expect me to design safe buildings on just 4 hours of sleep? Don’t you want me to breastfeed my daughter??).
I had heard about this thing called “elimination communication”, or EC, on a podcast back when my son was about 15 months old, around the time I had become pregnant with my daughter, and though I had excitedly bought the book and the potty and dutifully followed the recommended steps, he wanted NOTHING to do with it at the time.
I didn’t want to create a negative association, and I put it away. I had been finishing the book on my phone through the night time feeds during the wee hours of the morning, and on that fateful day nearly a year later, I noticed that my five week old daughter was getting quite fussy after a feed.
“Let’s put her on the potty, and see what happens!” I laid her down next to my son’s Baby Bjorn potty chair in the dining room, removed her diaper, and carefully propped her up on the seat. She peed almost immediately – and a look of extreme calm and relief passed over her face. She very nearly smiled.
We were shocked. Could it really be this easy? We had been struggling with our son for weeks, trying to convince him to try the potty, to want to use the Cars-themed underwear we had bought for him at Target. We had been putting off seriously introducing “potty training” because all the websites (and the well-meaning family members) had said it was better not to start something big in times of major change like getting a new sibling.
An hour later, we noticed the same thing happening with our daughter, and we offered again – and this time, she peed AND pooped! We knew what we were up against – we had ONE week left with all hands on deck, but we knew there HAD to be a better way than the strategy we had used the first time – and we were willing to try anything.
We decided right then and there: “We’ll just keep going until it’s no longer working for us.”
But boy did it work for us!
We quickly learned her potty signals, and she quickly learned to anticipate the offer. As a newborn she still peed very often throughout the day, and typically pooped at just about every feed. We offered at every diaper change, even if it was already soiled, and often caught more. We offered after every nap, during or after every feed, and anytime we got her out of the car seat, stroller, or baby carrier.
Once I went back to work, we taught our children’s caregiver how to recognize her signals and offer just like we did, and she kept the offers coming the best she could during the day. We didn’t catch everything, or even most, but it didn’t matter! Within a matter of days, we were catching nearly every poop in the potty, and within weeks, she was intentionally “asking” for the potty with a specific cry or facial expression that we learned to understand, similar to how we would read her hunger or sleep cues.
By five months, she could sit on the floor potty on her own, and we went MONTHS without changing a single poopy diaper. At six months, she began to use the specific potty hand sign we had taught her (the ASL letter “T”), and by the time she began to crawl at nine months, she began to initiate potty time ON HER OWN when she felt the urge to go by physically going to her potty!
We began transitioning her out of diapers and into trainers and underwear around a year as she was getting comfortable standing and cruising, and it was around that time that she first went to the potty and sat down when she needed to poop!
I had been in the kitchen with my son attempting to give him some rare undivided attention, and my daughter actually left the room. When I realized what was happening and went to check on her, I found her proudly sitting on that same Baby Bjorn potty chair in the dining room, a book in her hand and poop in the potty!
She was 14 months old, and she hadn’t even begun to walk.
Fast forward again, and we’re now just living life and enjoying the freedom that TWO fully potty trained children affords us. It’s been a diaper-free summer, through air travel, road trips, beach days, and swimming pools without the worry of public changing tables or un-triple-diapering a wet child at the pool. She tells us when she needs to go, and we take her – or she goes herself at home.
She’s 20 months old now at the time of writing, and she’s been dry at night for months. She can confidently handle her own clothes, climb up on the big toilet, and wash her hands on own. She only recently started using the actual word “potty”, a criteria most online lists of “readiness signs” will cite right up there at the top.
At 20 months old, the same age my daughter is now, my son had come home from daycare with a rash and poop drying in his diaper for the fourth day in a row.
I laugh now when I google “when is my child ready to start potty training” – most sources advocate starting between 18-24 months, and urge parents “not to start too early” lest it take longer to train their child.
Readiness criteria list things like being able to recognize the urge in their body, being able to tell you they need to go, being able to walk and mount a toilet on their own, and being able to handle their own clothing.
But the truth is so clear to me now, two kids and two completely different experiences later: our babies are born ready. All they need is for us to be ready to listen, and respond.
When I think back to those late nights bopping around our bedroom with my screaming son, I only wish I could go back and tell my new-mama-self what I know now. He really DID need to poop – my intuition was spot on. But he was crying, begging us, with every resource at his disposal – to please take his diaper off and give him the chance.
