How to take your baby to the potty: exactly what to do after you know it’s time to go

This is the Go Diaper Free Podcast with Andrea Olson, session 17 - let’s go potty!

Welcome to the Go Diaper Free Podcast, where we're all about teaching you how to stop changing diapers, starting at birth. And now your host…she used to do psych triage for a living...Andrea Olson.

Yes, that is true. I learned so much from that experience….

During four of our previous podcast episodes I outlined How to Know When Your Baby Needs to Pee...in other words, what I like to call The 4 Roads to Potty Time. In Episode 8 we covered Baby’s Signals; in Episode 10 Baby’s Natural Timing; Episode 12 taught us about Generic, or Common, Timing; and Episode 14 covered the Parent’s Intuition. When one of these 4 events occurs, it’s time to potty your baby. This session of the Go Diaper Free Podcast covers how to potty your baby, including variations by age range.

So, pottying your baby is basically a 7 step process. Let’s go through that process for newborns age 0-6 months, then mobile babies age 6-12 months, then young toddlers ages 12-18 months.

And just a little reminder for those of you listening to this podcast and not others of mine, if your baby is over 18 months old, it’s developmentally appropriate to do potty training, not EC. Visit https://godiaperfree.com/pottytraining for that resource. But right now we’re talking about EC, which is ages 0-18 months.

Let’s start with the nutshell version, which spans all ages:

Once you learn about the 4 Roads to Potty Time, during naked observation, you STOP observation and move on to Part 2, pottying. Here in Part 2, a lot depends heavily on the age and stage of your child (again, keep listening for all that!). But, there is a nutshell, and here it is….

It’s time to begin actually pottying your child. Like this:

You’ll notice one of the four things that you learned during Part 1 (a signal from him, his natural timing is nigh, it’s a common time to potty the babe, or your intuition kicks you).

When one of these things happen, you’ll either state (not ASK… never ask if they need to go) it’s potty time or just stay silent and let your actions speak for you. Or you say, “Let’s go, it’s time to potty.” It’s more of a statement than a question.

Whether your child can walk or not dictates how you get to the potty space, but know that you somehow get there and get the pants and/or diaper back-up out of the way (undress). And while you’re undressing, you check for wetness in whatever you just took off so you know whether to offer more or if it’s been missed altogether.

Then you either get your wee baby into position or have your young toddler sit down and… Cue. With a little baby who’s preverbal, you’ll cue with “psss” or “mm, mm” - what you taught during sound association. Or with a young toddler, you’ll just say your prompt word - “peepee” or “go potty.” During the pee or poo. Once. Then wait. {sounds of pee or poo going into the proper container}

Once done, which should be pretty obvious, you simply clean up and re-dress your babe and you’re all finished. So let’s talk about that wee baby potty position - you’re going to be holding her under the thighs with the baby’s back and head, especially if they don’t have neck control yet, leaning up against your chest. And, you basically support them and aim their bottom over the receptacle, or you hold them onto a mini potty (if they have neck control) facing you while you make your cue noise.

So, then you’re done and you re-dress your baby, and you’re all finished. So, how to know that you’re finished is usually they’ll straighten their legs or get up and run off. It’s a really good idea to keep the bathroom door closed if you have a crawler or young toddler - so at least it happens in the bathroom if they get off and pee on the floor.

So, anyway, if you are inclined to reflect what she did (“you went pee”) then do that. If not, saying less shows confidence as well, so do that. So, either reflect or say nothing.

Then you clean up. Baby and potty...if there’s any mess, which usually if you’re pottying your baby there’s not much to clean up.

And that, my friends, is the very, very, very simplified nutshell of pottying your baby. There is a very detailed section that I’ve written for starting EC with your particularly-aged baby - available in my works on GoDiaperFree.com - but this should give you an overall idea of how to do it.

Oh yeah. As the baby gets older, things will change. You’ll hand off the baton and teach certain parts, making her feel like an important part of the process (because she is!) - and btw, GDF.com with my work and our community there, is the only EC resource in the world that covers what to teach, and when...otherwise EC can drag on for a longer time period. Teaching is good...it’s like on-the-job training. That’s how we get potty independent earlier.

Also, over time, you’ll become involved less and less. But (roughly) for months 0-16, you can pretty much expect to be doing the bulk of the pottying work...the prompting, the cueing, the noticing, and then handing off the baton during months 14-18.

Here’s a more brief overview of that process I just described:

• notice it’s potty time (what you learned in part 1 - episodes
• 8, 10, 12, and 14 of this podcast, aka the 4 roads to potty
• time)
• state it’s potty time...or not
• carry or walk to potty spot
• undress + position or sit
• cue with noise or say the prompt word
• wait til it’s done
• reflect or say nothing
• re-dress and clean up

We can break this down even further by age range.

For newborns the process is roughly this:

• Notice it’s potty time (usually something nonverbal, body language, or something we learned in Episode 8)
• Acknowledge, undress, & go to potty space, checking if they’re wet
• Be patient…it takes a little while for them to get it out, a little longer than the older ones
• Notice when baby says “I’m finished”...usually through body language or crying, or falling asleep, or just sitting there
• Reflect or say nothing
• Clean up

For mobile babies:

It’s pretty much the same as it is with newborns, except you might have the crawling baby get herself to the potty, which gives her some ownership of the process. Or, the creeper can sit when the potty is placed behind the calves. Or other small tweaks, things to do in the process. You might also start using a prompt word instead of a cue noise...so “go peepee” instead of “psss.”

And for young toddlers:

• notice it’s potty time (this time, integrating the ‘peepee dance’ into the mix - so what used to be a signal is now the toddler’s peepee dance)
• acknowledge (not ask - they will always say “no”), go to potty space, and help undress (this part can somewhat be owned and operated by your kiddo; take the time to teach some things)
• have her sit and say prompt word/nothing (the cue noise changes into the prompt word - again, even before this age range)
• be patient…if you’re using the right apparatus it’ll put them in more of a squat position
• notice when she says “i’m finished” - usually by getting up and running off, again, keeping the bathroom door closed in case they try to run off when things aren’t quite done yet;
• you can also ignore them while they go potty to give them some sort of privacy, while staying with them, etc.
• reflect or say nothing
• clean up - maybe they help you dump the toilet or they grab a piece of toilet paper for you to wipe with - clean up baby and potty

Are you seeing where the process shifts when your baby grows a bit?

If you need a little more hand-holding, I don’t blame you. Just pay us a visit over at GoDiaperFree.com and see what sorts of resources we’ve got available. There’s a lot there...I’m sure we can help those who need it. And if you don’t, go ahead and try out what we did in this episode and see how it goes.

And that’s it for this week’s episode! How to Potty Your Baby.

Join us next time for Part 2 of our interview with Ms. Jamie Glowacki, non-coercive potty training guru - this next episode will cover some info that we ECers have learned from the potty training camp, and some information for those of you with kiddos in the older range of EC (nearing 18 months who might want to wrap it up with potty training) and kiddos over 18 months altogether. So stay tuned for that one.

Subscribe to the podcast at godiaperfree.com/itunes. That’ll take you over to my podcast channel and you can subscribe and leave a review there. Let me know what you think of this podcast...so far, the results are in that people are really getting a lot out of it, and I’m glad.

You can grab the show notes for this episode at godiaperfree.com/17. That’ll have any links that I’ve mentioned in this episode for you so you don’t have to remember a thing.

And, until next time, happy pottying everyone! See you next week.