UHF: Adventures in Early Potty Training

I haven't done any undercover hippy file posts in a while. It's not really intentional. After our homebirth, I kinda feel like my "undercover" part should be stripped from me but I'm still chugging away with my hippiness, it's just old news hippyness and not new fun to talk about stuff - until now.

We've started potty training!

I know, I know, Lucy is only 10 months old. That's the crazy part. Unlike my normal UHP, I'm not going to wait until we've done it to write a how post about how great this is or how that worked for us. I'm not sure how this is all going to work but in the research I've done I've found books about it and been reading about success stories on the mothering forum but not a lot of step by step stories or blog posts so I thought I would share our story as it happens.

First off, the why -

I had heard about elimination communication (e.c.) and even attended an information about it and know several moms who love it. It sounded neat but honestly, it just didn't really appeal to me. I definitely think it is one of those things you have to really want to do if you have any hope of making it work. But several things happened a few weeks ago that got me started thinking about starting potty training.

First, Lucy started upping her solids and all of a sudden, I could really tell when she went. In fact, I would see her and know, then wait ~30 seconds before taking her off to be changed. I had to change her right away because she absolutely hates being poopy. But it seemed so ridiculous to wait there when I knew what was happening.

Then I was reading some Montessori resources where she recommends starting at 12-18 months. That seemed really early compared to what I normally hear so I tried to find other information and the more I read, the more it just seemed to make sense and fit with our philosophy of giving Lucy opportunities to learn skills and become independent gradually (baby led weaning, shot glass not sippy, etc).

Lucy already dislikes being dirty and since I use cotton diapers most of the time, she knows when she is wet. I want to build off that. And since we are starting so early, there is no pressure, we are just slowly going to introduce the idea and incorporate it into our routine just like most of the other skills she will be learning in the next year. So I stopped asking why, and starting wondering why not? If we are both having fun with it, even if the progress is slow, why not just give it a try. So we are!

A number of people recommended Diaper Free Before 3 which I got and read and between that and late starting e.c. protocols, I've come up with a plan to get started. Stay tuned to hear more about the fun times we are going to be having!