Pottying baby at night [without losing sleep]: how to do (and decide whether to do) nighttime EC
Pottying your baby in the night hours can be very hard, especially with sudden resistance after months of doing it without a hitch.
Today's episode covers Nighttime EC in-depth, along with how to do it, what you'll need to do if things go poorly, and what I've done with my own babies.
You will hear:
- How to do EC at nighttime
- What to do if you run into resistance
- What I did with my own babies
Links and other resources mentioned today:
- Go Diaper Free: my popular EC book that simplifies EC, beginning to end.
- My Nighttime EC 101 Minicourse
- My Night Potty book available now!
- Get my FREE Easy Start Guide now!
Thanks for Listening!
To help out the show and help more parents find out about EC:
- Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one.
- Subscribe on iTunes
- Share your thoughts by leaving a note in the comments section below!
What is/was your biggest struggle with nighttime EC? Do you have any tips and tricks to share?
I look forward to discussing with you in the comments, below!
xx Andrea
Disclosure Note: As an Amazon Associate, I earn a small commission from purchases made through the links on this page.
This is a re-post of an article originally published by Andrea Olson on 1/14/2016
← A Brief History of Diapers: the dirty progression of ulterior motivesGetting back on track with EC [after falling off the wagon] →
Thank you for that VERY helpful podcast full of great practical advice and real senecios. We will sleep better tonight!
Oops… scenarios
You are so welcome Nicole!!!! I’m glad that it will help you all sleep better tonight. <3 Andrea
Thank you so much! I swaddle my baby (she’s 15 weeks old now)– actually double swaddle because she can’t go back to sleep otherwise and is too strong for just the basic swaddle. how is it possible to help her pee without completely waking her up? Should I just wait until she is older and doesn’t need the swaddle? I also am unsure of how to tell if she’s waking because she is wet. She usually doesn’t poo at night, but lately she has early morning wakings- if it’s before 6 she usually can go back to sleep on her own. After that- not usually and she’s not always hungry.
Hi I’m having a nighttime EC conundrum! Baby is 5 months, been doing part time EC since birth and have lots of catches every day. Didn’t do nighttime EC until a couple weeks ago when my baby started squirming like crazy for a long time at night and then sometimes accompanied by crying which she had never done at night before. I potties her and she peed and calmed down. But now she has been waking with crying and squirming every 1.5 to 2 hours and after I nurse her she wants to pee, or sometimes I just potty her and she cries and pees and then usually goes back to sleep, sometimes wants to nurse.
She had been sleeping mostly 2 hours at a time but it was growing to 3 or 4, now back to 1.5 or 2. It’s complicated by the fact she also teething. Could she be eating more than normal Cuz of teething and thats why peeing so much? Has she just become super sensitive to the feeling of needing to pee? She won’t really pee in diaper anymore at night except after lots of squirming and crying.
I wonder if this is like how you had 2 years of sleeping only 2 hours at a time? What was the pause u talked about? Do I need to adjust nighttime ec?? Erg
There is always a back and forth with my LO’s sleep cycle. And although, he sometimes manages 7 h with dry diaper, when he hits a developmental phase or is sick, can go right back to 1,5 h… Just bear with it! It will change again! 😅
Loved hearing your story about how you did things differently with baby 1 and baby 2, so very similar to my story! Helpful to hear that I’m not alone and that the choices I’m making in my own round 2 have worked out well for someone else and will probably continue working well for me too.
Thanks for sharing these tips!
Thanks for this episode! I love the podcast and wish there was more, but I know you’ve been busy with the baby potty and mom-ing, etc. I am really enjoying EC with my daughter, who is almost three months old. I plan to start doing some gentle sleep teaching when I stop swaddling her, which will be soon. In this episode you mention linking to some resources you used, but I can’t find them. Would you mind sharing those links?
Thank you Andrea! We have been doing EC with our 4 mobth old daughter and its great! She now wants us to help her through the night. So we will be trying that.
Thanks for even briefly mentioning your struggle with your first child – night nursing every 2 hrs and ppd! Been going through it with my now 12 month old. Prayer keeps me. Just discovered EC and started trying it this week. Thank you for all of this helpful info!
My 9 mo old wakes 2-3x in the night and has a dry diaper every time so I have been pottying her assuming/hoping it would help her to not wake any more often than she already does. I nurse her too and then put her back down. Would you recommend not taking her to the potty? Am I missing something?
Hi Bethany! If she is going during those times, keep at it. It’s wonderful that she is dry at night. xx Andrea
Hi! I have a 14 mo old who has been ec-ing since 8 mo. Love the book! Glad I found it but I have reached a snag!!
We were doing wonderfully. She was waking up with dry diapers (panties all day, disp at night) but began sleeping restlessly so I started nighttime pottying and that seemed to solve it until she started resisting the pot at night so I let her nurse and go back to sleep 😪 she began peeing in her diapers and now peeing in panties during the day… what did I do!? I am at a loss. Do I take the plunge to all panties and maybe change the nighttime receptacle?
You could try changing something about the pottying. Nursing while pottying helped me. Could be the hassle with her clothing (there is wonderful ec clothing which makes it faster to handle), or if you have to move a lot, you could change the placement of the potty…
Just keep at it and try different little things. Her body language will tell you, what is right for her. And of course it will change anyway! 😅
Hey Andrea, did you stop publishing transcripts of the podcasts, or am I just not seeing the link?
I don’t see it either
There should still be a transcript, Let me double check that! Thanks!
My daughter has been off and on waking needing to pee, and if I get there quick enough I can usually get there before she pees. She is pampers during naps and overnight, but undies during the day. My biggest issue is she won’t regularly communicate during the day when she has to pee. I’d say 8/10 times, less if she’s doing something really interesting/having fun playing. Then it’s not until she has a small accident and feels that her undies are wet. Does anyone have tips on how to get her to communicate? I press on her bladder gently when I say it’s potty time, but any time you ask if she wants/needs to go she will say no, but have an accident 30 seconds later.
I would encourage you use sign language to help. Also never be afraid to do a reset starting with naked time again.
My 2 year old has been daytime potty trained for 8 months and I would say daytime independent for two. Because of life issues and my own disability issues I waited to night potty train. Last week he said he didn’t want to wear a diaper at night so having already read the nighttime potty training routine I went for it. He has not waken up dry even once. Sometimes he is soaked. I don’t want to have to wake him up to potty. I don’t want to go back to diapers but it doesn’t seem healthy to have him covered in his own pee all the time when he sleeps. What do I do?
If you are reducing fluids before bedtime for at least 2 hours, and you don’t want to do any night pottying, I would go back to diapers at night for now if you haven’t seen any progress. Here are some tips from the podcast, for how I helped my son stay dry at night around that age 😊 https://godiaperfree.com/stop-peeing-bed-at-2-5-years-old/