How often do babies need to pee or poo?
Today we're gonna talk about the very mysterious timing of babies' elimination systems...fondly known as #1 and #2.
How often do babies pee? How often do babies poop?
How often do newborns go? (And why is it easiest to start EC at this age?)
How often do toddlers go?
What does a regular poop rhythm even look like?
You have so many questions! Luckily, I have so many answers.
All will be revealed in today's video. 6 1/2 minutes of pure education.
If you can't watch, play it anyway and listen...because it's my head, talking, and a lot of good information.
Take a break, my friend, and watch now:
You'll learn:
- how profoundly rare it is that newborns go
- why babies consolidate over time
- whether babies are incontinent or truly have sphincter control (doctors...you might not know it all this time!)
- why I'm thrilled that I don't have to clean up THAT many newborn poops
- how starting solid foods affects poop timing
- whether babies poop in their sleep
- whether naked babies pee more often, or less often,
- and a bunch of other neat stuff.
I bet this is more than you ever thought you would learn about poop and pee. Pretty cool.
Please comment below with how often your baby currently goes, and how old s/he is!
Looking forward to seeing where everyone is....
xx Andrea
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My baby is 16 days old and she poops every time we offer (when changing diapers, every 2 hours more or less). It seems she already knows and waits tô poop in the sink.
She most certainly is waiting for you to offer! That is such a wonderful feeling, isn’t it? Yay Flavia and baby!!
My little man is 4.5 months old and we’ve been doing EC since he was 7 weeks old. He pees probably 8-12 times a day with lots of cluster pees in the morning and poops between 2-4 times a day. We’ve been catching almost all the poops and at least 50% of the pees for a while now. He’s got the best post pee satisfaction face I’ve ever seen!
I’d love to see THAT in a photograph! I bet he loves what you’re doing together. He feels like you “get” him. (Btw I have a 5 month old – love this age!!) xo Andrea
I have a 5 months old too (LOVE that stage as well!) who has been ECed (part time! but still) for over 2 months and I think he goes about every 30 minutes, but it varies wildly. He sometimes asks 4 times in the span of 10 minutes (mostly when he is naked!), and sometimes wakes up from his night with a dry diaper, even though he feeds at night. I started because he was always uncomfortable in a wet diaper (I would change 20 a day! Thank god for cloth diapers), so it came really easy and I love to be able to respond to his need. We really communicate. He even uses the sign I do every time I offer to pee to ask for the potty (or to be fed or something else… still have to work on it, but that makes for less crying and fussiness). I generally potty on the bathroom counter, so we make eye contact in the mirror and we love it :)
Awesome Marie-France!!! So great you’ve got such a strong start and connection :)
This is helpful! When my son was a little baby I got so accustomed to him peeing so frequently, every 15-20 minutes, that whenever he would start holding it for longer stretches I would think something was wrong.
Now that he is 3.5-years-old he can go 3 hours between pees. He poops once a day, and has been since about 6-months-old. He could hold his pee all night since about 19-months-old.
So glad you found this helpful, Heidi! I love how knowledgeable you are about your son, currently and in retrospect. And dry at night at 19 months – so wonderful. :)
I’m doing early pottying with my second, and we started at 2 months old with her. (Started at 7 months with her older sister). Andrea, you’re awesome! Totally true that a baby will pee more often if naked and ways less often if around others. She always has training underwear (no extra absorption or water-proof layer) plus pants on, so if she does wet her pants (rare!) I can help her immediately.
Now, she’s just about to be 14 months old and reliably dry all day, and if she sleeps in our room, she’s dry all night because I wake when she stirs and help her to go in the potty. Because it’s summer, I think that has to do with the decreased quantity of pee, and she probably pees ever hour or two depending on inside/outside and how much water she drank. Poop varies from 1-3 times a day, to once every 3 days, but she always waits to use the potty for that, never her pants. Hooray for never having to deal with poopy tushie!
I was buying my back-up diapers last week (hadn’t bought diapers since March, so was a little overwhelmed) and I looked at a pregnant lady also bewildered at all the choices, and I said “Have you considered infant pottying?” She had never heard of it, but said she’d look into it after we talked briefly. :-)
Oh yay, Mary! That sounds awesome. And thx for spreading the word about this option. Your daughter sounds a lot like mine. She was done with diapers at 13 mos, wearing just undies thereafter during the day, and told us every single time since she was 15 mos old. It is such a free feeling to not have to depend on diapers – and to see how proud our LOs are of themselves at this early age. Thank you for your sweet words and I hope you are having a lovely diaper-free weekend! :) Andrea
Hi all, my baby is almost 14 months, we’ve been doing EC since she was 7 weeks, sometimes part time and sometimes almost full time.
At the moment she can hold her pee the whole night, roughly 60% of night nappies are dry. If we catch a really good/big morning pee (and poo) she’ll probably pee again after 1 hour. Thereafter, she usually holds it for 2-3 hours! I mainly use generic timing and transitions. Trying to teach her to sign. When I know it’s been very long and she just HAS to go, she can be playing/singing on the potty for 45 minutes, until she finally pees ?
Using 2 of the 4 roads is great, Micky! I’m so glad that you’re in tune with her. xx Andrea
My little girl is 2 years old. We tried Your method when she was 22 months old and she cliked at once during a day. Bit we still have mishaps during nap time and night…we are on vacation now at the seaside and I think it’s a problem to her because she is allowed to pee in sea through her bathing suit but not through her panties. It’s a kind of conundrum to her and she has mishaps during day now. Do You have some advice for sleeping mishaps? I’ve tried her sleeping naked but no result..???
I forgot…when she is awake she can hold for even two hours…but when she has a nap she goes almost every hour..
Some toddlers are just sound sleepers! I would use a backup of some sort at night/naps until they come up dry again. And getting her back on track out of the water will just take some time and very calm repetition. You’re doing GREAT! xx Andrea
You mentioned, Andrea, that new newborns hardly ever pee or poo for the first 5-7 days. My baby peed a lot those first 3 days. The hospital nurses commented on how he went through so many (full) diapers. Because of other things that happened during labor and in the few days after he was born, I wondered if his peeing (and extra weight loss) was due to the fact that I had to have an IV during labor to re-hydrate me. Is it possible that all his extra peeing was due to getting rid of the excess fluid from the IV?
Dear lindsay, that is very possible! I often observe that babys from women who had iv-fluids loose more weight and also pee more than others.
Noemi (midwife)
I potty trained my son at 18 mos along with your Tiny Potty Training Book and these numbers are accurate! As a single mom and an RN I coped with learning his schedule and how to train by charting every time he went and what happened. 18 mos was about 15-45 min then jumped up to 30-120 min as it clicked by the second month. He was dry through the night day 3. Now he’s 3 yrs old and can go hours. Even still these days bored at home = more pees, juice = more pees, having to poop = more pees.
I babysat for a kiddo that was going diaper free. She had the cutest way of letting us know when it was time. A nicely adjusted kiddo.
Awesome Jason – I love getting feedback from sitters, nannys, and mannys :) about their care experience with ECing babies. :)
my 14th month daughter normally pass urine 15-20 times everyday but sometimes she is passing urine in every 10-15 mintues…I counted a day she passed urine 40-45 times…is there is some serious problem…..I need information about this….please advice / help me
Hello,
We stopped using daytime diapers at 13 months and switched to tranining pants. He would pee in them every 45 minutes. At 14 months we started using undies and now he can stay dry for 90 minutes. I still have to prompt him, is this a step in the right direction. Do pees consolidate with time. He signals by asking me to pick him up, but most of the time we use transition times and easy catches. What should i do next to promote his potty independence?
Hi Ivana! That’s fantastic!! Make sure you are using the signal you want to see/hear from him. Something like saying “potty” and using sign language. He will start to use it. Work on teaching him to sit on the potty on his own. Then you can work on teaching all of the parts of the potty routine until he is fully independent. Just pick one at a time and use your own judgment of his abilities to introduce a skill. xx Andrea
I started putting little man on seat reducer at 15 months but he hated it and fought to get off. Little by little he got used to it and didnt fret but then kept grabbing every possible thing within reach. After removing all these things he kept turning around whilst seated and try to flush. I never managed to keep him on very long (although now at 20 months he seems ok on the reducer seat). and the opening in the reducer seat was far too big for his tiny bum. Then i went to buy a tiny potty and he was ok sitting on that. After a few months of hit and miss and adjusting the approaches he is now almost dry and almost clean during the day. At twenty months old. BUT he pees at times almost every few minutes and lets out a teeny weeny pee. Sometimes he can hold it but today he had a tiny one in his pants. (He didn’t want his pants back on after just doing a tiny one. I guess because he had more. He must do up to 5 tiny ones in a row sometimes. Just when I think something wrong he goes an hour or hour and half without and then come out with a good size clean clear pee. Why does he have sometimes a whole series of tiny pees in a row? 2 or 3 times a day. Is it to do with stalling bedtime, is it psychological or is it because of impending poo or… is it just normal in early potty days?
Hi Peggy! My guess is the tiny pees are him just letting off a little pressure. You can try running water or giving him a cup of water to drink/play with on the potty to encourage him to go. You can also try letting him pee outside, sometimes “watering” the grass or plants helps lol. xx Andrea