The Poop Report: Diapering and Pottying at 9 Months

I love letting my 9-month-old wear a Kissaluvs fitted diaper
(without cover) around the house.

Potty
My 9-month old pees and poops on the potty every morning. Maybe twice a month she only pees without pooping. And here's the really crazy thing. Two days in the last month she has woken up completely dry. That's 10+ hours in the same diaper, folks. Dry. And that's how I know that babies can hold it.

As for the rest of the time, well, life is crazy, especially with school starting. My eldest child's first year! He came home from the first day and told me that they gave him chocolate milk and a chocolate chip cookie for a snack. Yikes! But that's a topic for another day. My goal for my first month of school is to not make the school staff hate me.

But before school started sometimes we would have these days where the baby would wake up and several hours later she had used the potty four times and not a single wet diaper because I was putting her on the potty every hour or so. Now life is a little more hectic, but she still uses the potty at least 3 times a day: first thing in the morning, and after her naps. She consistently wakes up dry from her naps, and I always put her on the pot when she wakes up from a nap unless I have to leave immediately for an appointment. I also often put her on the pot just before putting on her night time diaper or when I need to use the bathroom.

There are also many times during the day when I know she probably needs to use the potty but I don't have time to put her there. I still can't leave her unattended as she often lunges to reach things and would sometimes fall off the potty if I were not there to stop her. And, yes, she still sometimes poops in her diaper, but not very often. I almost never leave her diaper-free for extended periods of time as she's just too mobile and certain folks would not take it lightly if the baby peed on their toys. I do occasionally have her diaper-free outside on a blanket.

Diapers
We are still using the same diapers we were at 7 months: fitted Kissaluvs fitted diaper without cover at home or unbleached prefold (in thirds) inside a Thirsties cover; and Bumgenius with extra stuffing at night. I love using just a fitted diaper at home. It's so easy to tell whether she is wet or dry. Which means I can change her as soon as she pees. Even my kids tell me, "Mami, the baby is wet!" It also means that I can easily tell she has been dry for a long time and take her to the potty. The other day my husband noticed that she had been dry for a while and on his own took her to the potty. That was a first.

I'm using many different covers at the moment, a combination of Imse Vimse covers, medium Thirsties covers with snap closure, Thirsties-duo covers (adjustable size) with snap closure, and Flip covers (also adjustable size) with snap closure. I bought the Flip covers because I was bummed the Thirsties-duo covers do not have a flap to hold the prefold in place as the original Thirsties covers do. The Flip covers have that flap, but I am not in love with them because they are lacking the double-leg gusset the Thirsties have, which I find really does make a difference with poop leakage for those times when the baby poops in her diaper. Now that the baby is eating more solid food, this will probably matter less and less, so I'm sticking with the Flip covers anyway.

One little annoyance I'm finding with all of these adjustable-size diaper covers is that sometimes the snaps for the adjustable sizes (not the snaps for the closure) come undone on their own while I'm doing up the diaper. Maybe I'm taxing them beyond their limit with my chunky baby and need to move up to the next size. I don't know, but it annoys me. Especially since my active baby is getting harder and harder to put a diaper on. But rather than search for a cover I love, I've decided to just stick with the mish-mash I have until this baby is out of diapers.


For more tips, tricks, and tales from early potty training, visit my Early Potty Training page.

What's the Poop Report at your house?

This post is part of
Works for Me Wednesday

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