Encouragement: Success Stories from Moms who do Elimination Communication with their Babies

Today I’m gonna share a bunch of testimonials from mamas (and one daddy) who’ve done Elimination Communication and/or potty training with their babies, using the Go Diaper Free resources as their guide.
These are amazing and I hope that they both warm your heart and inspire you just like they do for me.

Sometimes I post these little notes up on my office wall to stay inspired, so if you have a moment, please leave your testimonial and raving review over at my podcast godiaperfree.com/thepodcast at iTunes or wherever you’re listening. These testimonials most certainly inspire me and others to do this and keep on keepin’ on!

Alright...enjoy these stories, so much. Here goes:

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Hi Andrea.

I'd like to share my story because I am amazed!

2 days ago I was sitting in my nursing chair thinking to myself there had to be a better way! Little miss 5 weeks old hadn't slept all morning and would not stop screaming and I couldn't settle her, even the boob wasn't working. I knew that when babies cry they are trying to communicate with us but I just didn't know what was wrong and I'd exhausted my list of ideas.

So of course I jumped on Google, well I stumbled across an article about EC and it sparked my curiosity. So I read more and more and more and it JUST MADE SENSE! So that night I gave it a go! She woke up and I took her to the toilet and BAM! She went! I was so surprised and she looked so relieved.

Fast forward to now and she hasn't done a poo in her nappy sinse (we have missed most wees but hey!) and I am so happy and she is settled, happy and overall content!

I just want to say thank you for your podcast, I have been listening through all your episodes and ordered a top hat potty to make feeding time easier!

I have found it really hard to find anyone else that provides such concise, helpful and neutral information. So thank you.

- Helen from Victoria, Australia.

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I just HAD to send you an email. My experience with EC has been amazing!!!

I’ll make this short because there is no way I can share all of the details.

First of all, I didn’t hear about EC until my son was 3 months old. I had a friend sharing about how she had started EC with her 6 month old and I had to Google “EC with babies” because I had no idea what it stood for. I started reading and told my husband, “it’s potty training for babies! How insane!! We could NEVER do this with Gideon. He pees every 5 minutes.”

I started asking my friend lots of questions and she shared her experience and pointed me to your mini potty. I had no idea what I was doing but I downloaded your observation chart and tried to keep track of when Gideon would go potty. I was looking for signals and couldn’t detect any. After a couple of weeks, I signed up for an online course you were teaching. That’s where I learned the 4 roads to potty and the 4 easy catches*. I decided to stop trying to observe and just to go for one easy catch—the poops.

The only problem was that my son barely had any time between his poop face and his first push plus he would always poop while breastfeeding! I started getting discouraged that I wasn’t catching anything but decided to try another easy catch—the wake up pees.

I started taking my son faithfully every time he woke up. I would make the pssst sound and hold him over the potty. For the first few days l, nothing. I realized that he was going just before I made it to his room so I decided to go in just a few minutes before he would usually wake up and take him then. IT WORKED! For the past month, he has been going pee in the potty every time he wakes up. He even keeps his diaper dry during nap time!

I got up the courage to go for the poops again since I felt more in tune with Gideon’s signals. I noticed he would stop sucking during breastfeeding right before he would push. It was still a tight turn around but I decided to hold him over the potty and let him finish even if he started before I got there. After a few days of that, he picked up the rhythm and would wait for me to take him. It is truly incredible to witness! I am SO SO thankful for all of your resources! I love my EC journey and can’t wait to start as a newborn with my next one.

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Bonus: my husband’s story…

When I first told him I wanted to try, he was totally supportive of anything that would “help with potty training later” but he wanted “nothing to do with it”. One day, I was doing the dishes when Gideon started to wake up from a nap. I asked my husband to hold him over the potty while I finished the dishes and he was extremely hesitant. I said please, my hands are all soapy. My husband agreed and Gideon peed right away! From then on, Jonah (my husband) was hooked. He insists that Gideon prefers to go with me but he is willing to take him anytime I’m not available. He’s gone as far as telling his whole family all about EC and how quickly Gideon is picking up on it. Gideon has even started blowing raspberries to mimic our pssst sound and he also tries to pull off his diaper when he has to go. Jonah is so proud and very encouraging of the process now.

I feel like it has brought our whole family closer together and I am so glad my friend told me about it!

- Grace Kubish

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By the way, please pass the message to Andrea that I am having an amazing experience with EC with my 4-month old thanks to her book and tiny potty chair. I am honestly shocked because this baby has been a very fussy baby but my intuition told me that it was time to start and she has gone from being fussy to really relieved that she no longer has to soil her pants!

Thank you so much!

- Emily Goodwin

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Thank you for creating the infant potty. The first time I put my 7 week old on the potty, she pooped. It blew my mind. It's still kind of a toss up learning the patterns of an exclusively breastfed baby, but it is much better than cleaning many poopy cloth diapers.

I have also purchased tiny undies when I was doing EC with my son. The undies were an excellent fit and doubled as swimwear!

Best,
Theresa
(Mom of 2, Portland ME)

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Hi there!

My name is Melissa and I wanted to share an EC success story. I don't have Instagram so I can't post it there but I wanted this to get out.

This isn't a testimony about why I started EC (though I can't imagine ever doing anything different), but a testimony about pushing through the hard parts and knowing that this works.

My son is 7 months old ( we started EC at 4 months) and you know what that means... introduction to solids. Last month, Rowan had many days of straight 100% catches of poos (pees are much harder for us to catch), but at 7 months we start to have occasional misses. When you have not had to change a poopy diaper in forever, hitting a slew of misses makes you so grateful and determined to keep up the pottytunities!! It's also very frustrating.

This past weekend, we went out of town for Mother's day to visit my and my husband's mothers. Traveling inevitably causes our EC to shake up and for Ro, he seems to hold his poo as long as possible. Not only that, but I introduced yogurt to him so his digestive tract was all out of whack.

I missed his first poo (though knew he signaled just wasn't fast enough), but caught his second one. That was Sunday afternoon and he didn't poo again until Tuesday afternoon.

Between those two poos (Sunday and Tuesday), Rowan went through major potty resistance...he would start screaming when I put him on the reducer. He would arch his back and make it plain that he did not want this.
I tried everything I knew to do: toys, cuddles while on the toilet, songs, a different bathroom, the sink, you name it.

But even though it was hard and terribly frustrating, I still offered when I felt he signaled even though he wasn't going.

On Monday he was not himself. He was so irritable and we spent a lot of time nursing. He tried to poop but only a small round pellet came out and he did a small, what we call a flewfer, in his diaper.

By then, I was suspicious of a diet issue or constipation.

Tuesday morning I listened to Andrea's podcast on constipation. I felt Rowan's belly, as she recommended, and it was very very tight.

Great.

We spent our morning in the garden and when we came back in, I changed his wet diaper, gave him a pottytunity (which he resisted and didn't go) and put him in his tiny undies for some diaper free time. I was surprised that he didn't wet his pants when I checked him later so I offered him a pottytunity based on my intuition but nothing...

By this time, it was time for his nap so I nursed him in his undies (wrapped in a towel), and that's when he popped off and gave what seemed to be a signal though it sounded different than normal.

I told him to wait and took him to the bathroom with a water bottle for him to play with. For some reason, he was okay with being on the toilet and peed. Then, I remembered the podcast where Andrea recommended a tummy massage. So I started singing his calming song and started massaging his belly. After a few motions, I pressed in a little and he let out a massive sound and poop! I congratulated him and continued the process until he seemed done.

I couldn't imagine how amazing he felt!!

We went back to nursing, and after some eye gazing, he started that sweet little baby song and closed his eye to begin a comfortable sleep (the timer picture below shows how many minutes it took for him, after his poo, to start nursing and closing his eyes for the start of his sleep....pretty amazing!!).

I told someone recently that this is my normal. Since this is my first baby, I couldn't imagine any other way to potty my baby. I am so thankful for EC because it makes me feel empowered. It makes me feel intune with my baby and I feel that it helps him to be more comfortable and heard. It takes a lot of work, but to me, it is worth it.

Thanks Andrea!!!

PPS. I just bought Brave New Birth and can't wait to get into it!

Below are my timer picture and a picture of my boy a month ago enjoying his new reducer!

- Melissa Rescott