Elimination Communication aka Bucket Training

Elimination Communication (EC for short) isnt really potty training. Because lets face it, its totally ridiculous to think you could potty train a newborn babe. EC is a way of teaching the baby to be aware of his shishi and doodoo. Because lets face it, its totally ridiculous to spend 2-3 years teaching a kid to crap his pants and then expecting him to do otherwise.

So we have been ECing part time. I havent gotten up the gusto to commit to a full day of no diaper. I think when we live someplace a bit warmer Ill give that a go. For now we offer Ika the opportunity to shishi/doodoo at the most convenient times for us. During a diaper change or right after he wakes up are the best times to catch something.

Heres how it works: we "offer the bucket" by holding him under this thighs in a modified squat and then we cue him by making a "psst" sound. The cue is supposed to help him know its time to relax his bowels or bladder. And we just hold him there over the sink/bucket/toilet and talk to him or cue him until he goes or until we give up.

I would say that 4 out of 5 times we will get something for our efforts. Sometimes we get both #1 and #2, which is rad. Other times I get one or the other and then I put a diaper on him and whichever one I didnt get in the bucket is now in the diaper (so frustrating!). Yet another option is nothing happening, but thats less likely since we only EC at the most opportune times.

If you could only see how excited Mr A gets when we catch something - something BIG - in the sink...you would think we are insane. Tonight we went to a volleyball game at Clackamas CC and I was changing his diaper in the restroom. Well, since it was right there I offered him the potty and he went! In a public bathroom! Its a portable skill! Very exciting stuff.

So why are we doing this? Well, for starters its fun/cool to think that your kid can pee on command (which, by the way, isnt exactly what he is doing - but its fun to think it is).
The main reason I wanted to try the way of the bucket was OF COURSE to save money. Because Im a miser. Im frugal. Im German. If you could figure out how to do this full time imagine what you would save from never using diapers! Unreal. For the time being, Ive been using a system that is like part cloth, part disposable and part bucket. He still soils a ton of diapers but think how many more I would be changing if every shishi I caught in the toilet went into a dipe instead! The proof is in the pudding and weve gone through almost 2 packs of disposable dipes since he was born. Thats about 80 diapers in 3 weeks. I think thats below average.

Oh and by the way... Cloth diapers, in my opinion, are NOT as hard as people want to make them seem. The technology of cloth nowadays means that if I had the money I would be using the tricked out cloth dipes and they would be stupid easy. Ive been using mostly recycled tshirt diapers and regular ole prefolds and I would still consider it to be very easy. And when you use cloth diapers theres no reason to not use cloth wipes, too. Throw it in a bucket and when the bucket gets full throw that in the washer.

Mr A, who did the cloth thing 15+ years ago, is in love with Snappis and commented several times on how great they are. Of course, they only work with prefolds or something of similarly woven fabric (NOT tshirt dipes) but I would recommend Snappis to people who want to do cloth.