The Purpose of a Pottytunity: Why we offer the potty when it might not yield a catch!

So today we're going to talk about pottytunities. This is episode 174. You can check out the show notes at godiaperfreee.com/174.

Hey there, welcome to the Go Diaper Free podcast. I'm Andrea Olson, your host, author, and mom of five babies, all EC from birth, all out of diapers by walking.

Okay, so today I want to talk about potty-tunities. What is a pottytunity? Now this can apply to those of you who are potty training or doing Elimination Communication, or EC, which is infant potty training from birth. So a potty-tunity is simply an opportunity to use the potty. It is an offering. It is optional... The parent decides, I think that it's time, based on your signals or your pee-pee dance, based on how often you usually go to the bathroom, based on our lifestyle, we're about to go somewhere and it'd be really good, if everybody could try to go pee before we go, or like right before bed, something like that. The parent is the person who decides when there's a pottytunity and this could be that the baby has signaled and told you, "Hey, I need to go."

With some babies, that's a little bit more rare than mostly the parent initiating in earlier years. And as well as with potty training, the parent is going to initiate in the first couple phases of potty training, if you follow me on my book, and then the child starts to initiate. There is this gradual you're working as a team and then you're not. So the parent is doing everything, you're working as a team, and then the child is doing everything. That's the goal.

So a Pottytunity, why do we offer them? We offer them because we think our child needs to go to the bathroom, and we think it's a good time to go. What if your child does not go? It shouldn't matter. For me, I believe, and let's talk about babies for a second, zero to 18 months, because that's the majority of you guys. 0 to 18 months, we offer a potty-tunity at predictable times. We are consistent with that.

So how many of you guys are doing EC part-time? Probably about 50% of you, that's usually what it comes down to. You're doing EC part-time. You're not doing it all the time. Maybe you have a daycare, maybe you have a mother-in-law who watches them and doesn't potty them. That's fine. So when you offer a pottytunity, it's going to be during those times when you're choosing to do EC, pretty simple. So say it's every wake up and every poop, and maybe we're also doing the diaper changes. So every time you open that diaper up on the changing table, you're going to have your mini potty there, and you're going to offer the potty at every diaper change. Does your baby have to go? No, this is the beauty of EC. The way I teach it is that your baby gets to decide whether they need to or want to release and go when you offer.

That is a really healthy habit, that's going to serve your baby throughout his or her whole life, knowing themselves. So I know myself, I know when I need to go or not. I am the only one who knows when I need to pee or poop. My parents might have a good guess, but I am the one. I am the king or queen of my castle. And I hold the keys as to whether I open the sphincter or not. So when we offer the pottytunity at the diaper change, they have the right of first refusal. They can go or they cannot go. It's pretty simple. And in the morning, a lot of people will offer the morning pottytunity because I have told them that the antidiuretic hormone, or ADH, wears off in all mammals, including babies. It wears off every time we wake up, even if it's the middle of the night, and our sleep cycle is broken, whether you're grown up responding to a newborn in the middle of the night, or you're a newborn just waking up in between sleep cycles, like you're designed to do so you can nurse.

No matter who you are, that hormone wears off, the bladder fills, and usually the baby's dry and needs to go to the bathroom, and hopefully you're dry and you need to go to the bathroom. So that's a pottytunity, any wake up is a pottytunity. It's an opportunity for us to offer the potty in hopes that we might catch something, and in hopes that we can make our baby more comfortable, less fussy, and more in line with his or her innate desire for hygiene.

All mammals are born wanting to be clean and dry, otherwise all mammals would have died out from disease a long time ago. So this is the way that we were designed. So we do the wake up pottytunity and they never pee, and they always have a full diaper. You might feel like giving up, but don't give up. Want you to know that your consistency and predictability will pay off, it just might take 15 months, which is fine. It might take four weeks, which is fine. It will take how long it takes. You might immediately start catching pees and your baby waits in the morning for you, and then that's an easy pottytunity.

Awesome. So again, an opportunity to potty is a pottytunity. They don't have to go, it's just a chance to go. And we really want to offer them consistently. I love the four easy catches, you guys. If you can't figure out signals. You don't know how often your baby goes. Just drop all that for now, you can get back to that later. And for now, just do the wake ups. When you know they're pooping or about to poop, and you see them start to bear down, just say, "Wait," take them to the potty. We're going to do every diaper change. And then when they're in the high chair or the car seat, we really want them to be comfortable, or in the baby carrier, you're wearing them on a walk. You want them to be comfortable while you're shopping.

So you're going to offer a pottytunity before and after putting the baby into something or taking them out of something, like the bathtub. We definitely don't want, what we call in our family, poop eggs in the bath, because poop eggs are no fun to be in the bath with, especially if you have four children in the bathtub together, like I often do. So we want to offer before and after that's the fourth easy catch. It's just a matter of which of these four am I going to do? When are my potty-tunities going to be every day? Is there only going to be one? That's cool? Are there going to be five? Okay.

You get to choose and design the when, and then they get to decide, in their bodies, okay, do I need to go or not? And if you really know that they really need to go to the bathroom and they don't go when you offer, carry them around naked bottomed for a little while and offer again. Because nine times out of 10, their timing, their natural rhythm, has totally expanded, because they're growing. And as your baby grows, their bladder gets bigger and stronger. It's really, mostly, it just gets bigger, and their attention span becomes longer and longer. A 4 month old, or a 12 month old, zero attention span. You've got a 2 year old or a 3 year old, longer attention span. All of these things just evolve as your baby grows out. It changes so quickly. And once you master something, it's going to change tomorrow anyway, so just do the best you can today. Pick your pottytunities and enjoy them.

Whatever you do catch, we can celebrate that and be like, awesome teamwork, great, great job. We did it. I never say good girl or good boy. I will say great job or awesome, yay, or man, it isn't great, or whatever you want to say to your child, high five, or say nothing at all. It's all good. So this was all about pottytunities. I'm going to stop it right there. I hope that you've learned something today. Just remember that your consistency matters more than whether you catch something during a pottytunity. Eventually all babies sync up with your caregiver, if the caregiver is consistent and offers us as repetition. So I really hope that this has helped you.

And I think I do want to share this one comment from somebody who is tuned in right now. We had a great pottytunity this morning. My 16 month old peed in the potty, wiped up his front, and then went back and sat on the potty and pooped. It was great.

So pottytunities, when they do yield a catch, are super awesome. Who is with me on that one? All right, so that's all I have to say about pottytunities. Go forth and choose your one pottytunity you're going to do today or tomorrow within the next 24 hours. And if you catch your very first catch, I really want to hear about it.

Thank you guys so much. I'm Andrea Olson with Go Diaper Free, and I'll see you next time.

Again, you can check out the show notes, and the full transcript, and links to everything I mentioned in today's show over at godiaperfree.com/174. Thank you so much for tuning in.