For the past several weeks, my baby has made a deposit in the potty every single morning. We are well beyond this being a fluke.I've been putting her on the potty first thing in the morning for nearly a month. If I get her on the potty really fast, often her diaper is barely wet at all. Ninety percent of the time she pees and poops. And on those days I rarely have to change a poopy diaper. She spends five to ten minutes on the potty at a time. I still have to hold her on the potty as she doesn't yet have the control to sit up unassisted.
It still continues to amaze me that as soon as I put her on the potty, I can see her straining to pee or poop. She really gets it. I'm not sure if my cue words are making any difference, but she definitely associates the potty with elimination. This was how I got started with early potty training (or elimination communication) with my second child as well: at about 9 months, I started putting her on the potty first thing in the morning, and almost every single day she peed and pooped (a lot).
I've been thinking about why this has worked so well for me and decided that it isn't just luck. It probably makes a difference that I cloth diaper, which means my babies feel wet every time they pee. But I think the big factor is that I sleep with my babies. This means that they rarely wake up completely in the middle of the night, I wake up as soon as they wake up, and they nurse a lot at night. My baby wakes up with a full bladder and a full bowel, and I put her on the potty very soon after she wakes up.
There is a sad part to all this potty-ness first thing in the morning. And that's I no longer laze around in the bed next to my baby, just snuggling and stretching. I don't always jump out of bed immediately. Sometimes I wait a bit, and I'm sure she pees in her diaper when I do. But when I start hearing toots or hear her grunting a bit, I am out of the bed in a flash. So that's the trade-off.
I think it's worth it.
For more tips, tricks, and tales from early potty training, visit my Early Potty Training page.
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