EC Update: Fifteen Months

It has been quite a long while since I have written about practicing EC.

Wait, seriously. I just went and checked the archives. Holy mother of batman... has it really been TEN MONTHS (?!) since I last wrote about it?!

Get it here.

Crazy.

In case you don't already know what EC is you can learn more about it in this post on it. Or, if you are REALLy die-hard and want to know about it so you can practice it with your own baby, I recommend you check out this book.

EC Update: 15 MONTHS

Well, things did go really well for us for quite some time. It got to a point some days where we would have more "catches" than "misses". This was awesome for my self-esteem, confidence in the method, as well as on my laundry machine and my hates-to-do-laundry self.

However, back around six months ago things started going backwards. So what happened?

Mobility.

Like everyone said it would, it made it a LOT more difficult to read her signs. She became too busy to pay attention in the same way to her body's cues. (Duh, there were things to explore, bits of old food to eat off of the floor, tables to climb up on... no one has time for trivial things like going to the bathroom... sheesh mom!)

I think we possibly could have pushed through this hurdle if not for the fact that around this same time Brian and I got in a bad car accident. How did this affect EC? I couldn't lift her without being in pain. Holding her in the squatting position was no longer an option, and neither was holding her over the toilet.

So, we kind of took a break for awhile. I tried not to focus on it too much (which is part of why I didn't write about it...) because it was discouraging to me. I was disappointed because it HAD been working and I really believed if I hadn't stopped/been forced to stop putting the energy into it, it could have STILL been working.

As my strength has slowly been coming back and her movement has "plateaued" in that she is now fully walking on her own (more like running, really... ), we've been slowly getting back on the EC-train. She is doing fabulous at learning sign language now so we have been working with her on understanding what "potty" means so she can tell us if she needs to go.

And guess what?

Just like I knew it would... it's working! Again. Okay, so maybe most days she signs it... after she goes. Or maybe she tries to put her pee in the potty by placing her potty over a puddle she just made on the floor.... But she's trying. She's getting it. And you can see she is SO proud of herself when she goes on the potty. Most mornings if I put her on the potty and let her read books... she poos. That's first thing in the morning, though. The rest of the day is kind of a crap shoot... (Haha. I made a pun! Get it?)

That's what happens most days.

But, then there are really, really good days, too.

Like today, for example, all on her own she woke up and signed to me "potty" and I placed her on the toilet and she went... both peepee and poo.

So proud of her. So proud of me.

And who knows, maybe she will be potty-trained before two. She is, after, all, only just turning fifteen months.... so we are still ahead of the curve, I guess...

Have you heard of EC before? Are you practicing it with a kiddo? Let me know your thoughts/experiences with potty training?