Saturday 30 November 2013

Elimination Communication

Elimination communication (or EC) was always something that I thought would be beyond me in my parenting journey. I pictured being constantly covered in wee and poo and endlessly scrubbing the carpet, so I put that one in the too hard basket.

Over the months I've been quietly noticing when Mio needs to go by the little signs that she makes. She grizzles a little and she always wakes up (sometimes reluctantly) when she is going to wee or poo. My interest in EC was reignited after a brief conversation with a mother of a 10 month old told me she started EC after working out that her baby fussed and grizzled until she had her nappy off and then would wee over everything. I went home and thought about it a bit and did some more reading and decided to give it a go.

We've been playing around with EC for a little while now and it's really great. I do less washing now and have to remind myself to put a load of nappies on every second day so they don't get stinky.

Night times can often be the toughest time for parenting and broken sleep can be a killer but I've been lucky in that Mio got into a sleeping through the night routine straight away and just woke to feed. More recently though I noticed that some nights she was waking more frequently and not always wanting to feed. When I started ECing I realised that this waking was because she needed to wee. Some nights she sleeps solidly for a few hours without waking and others she seems to wake every hour. Now that I know she is waking because she needs to wee I find it hard to ignore her needs for a clean dry nappy so I have to get up and take her.

I'm doing my best to catch all her wees and poos but it's not always easy when we are out of the house and some days I feel like it's easier just to have a nappy on her when I have a thousand things to do.

No comments:

Post a Comment