What to do if your baby poops or pees in the bathtub

EPISODE 245: What to do if baby poops or pees in the bathtub

There's a poop in the pool! Or in this case, the bathtub. It's the stuff of dramatic Hollywood scenes and many parents' nightmares. But can it be prevented? And how do you handle it if you are faced with a floater? Let's dive in. This is Episode 245, What to do if baby poops or pees in the bathtub.

Hello and welcome to the Go Diaper Free podcast. I'm your host, Nicole Cheever, Go Diaper Free Certified Coach, and mama to three kiddos who all went through EC and potty training at different ages and stages.

Hello and thanks for joining me today. I'm Nicole Cheever with Go Diaper Free, and this is Episode 245, What to do if baby poops or pees in the bathtub. If you're listening on a podcast player, please subscribe, and of course we would love it if you leave us a review. We'd really love to know what you think of our show. Then head on over to the blog when you're done and leave us comments or ask us any questions you have. You can also find links to everything I mention, the transcript, and the show notes over at godiaperfree.com/245.

Today we'll be talking about why babies sometimes poop or pee in the bathtub, what to do about cleaning it up, how to handle it from an EC or potty training standpoint, and a few tips on how to prevent it.

First off, humans when we enter water have something called an immersion diuresis response, and that simply means when you're in water, it gives you the urge to pee, even if you've done it recently. That's one of the reasons many of us, even adults, feel like we need to pee once we're in water. When your baby's in a bathtub, it's usually warm, relaxing, they're in a seated position, so this can also inspire poop if those muscles become relaxed enough. In fact, some of us use the bath to try to move things along. I have a 21-month-old who deals with occasional constipation, and so we'll put her in a nice warm bath with some Epsom Salt, and that can kind of get things going. Thankfully, usually not in the bathtub, but at least a short while after that.

If you are potty training or have an older toddler that you're facing some resistance with, there's also the possibility that the combination of the warm bath and relaxation can actually make them lose their poop in the bathtub, meaning they've just been holding it in too long. They're scared to poop in the potty, or they're trying to get their diaper back, and they just lose the ability for those muscles to hang on any longer. It usually is a pretty big surprise. You can tell by the look on their face when it happens.

From a health and safety standpoint, typically, if you have a child who is pooping in solid poops – you've already started solid foods and it looks more like an adult poop – it's what we call formed, not loose. Then as long as the poop that escapes is formed, all you really need to clean up is soap and water. You're going to remove the poop from the bathtub and flush it down the toilet, and then you can wash down the bathtub with soap and water. After all, that's what most of us use to wash our hands after we've wiped ourselves, right? So simple soap and water should be just fine. If you choose to go a step further and use any kind of cleaning agents or bleach, it's very important to completely wash your tub down thoroughly with lots of water before you return your child to the tub.

If you've got an infant who's pooping the typical loose, water-soluble breast milk or formula poops, you could just wash it down the drain. After all, you're not really going to be able to get that out of the water. So pull the plug, wash it down the drain, and again, if you want to use some soap and water, that should be just fine. If your child is facing any kind of illness and struggling with diarrhea and that's why they're losing their stool in the bathtub, then you may want to consider using something more but as long as you're thoroughly, thoroughly washing it down with soap and water, then that should really get rid of everything of concern.

Now we'll talk about how to deal with it if you're practicing EC or if you're in the process of potty training. What I think is really funny about this topic is this is the way some of our readers and listeners actually found us. They had never heard of EC before. They just had this instinct, this intuition, that when their baby started pooping, whether it was in the bath or even in the diaper, that they didn't want to clean that up, and they wanted to put it somewhere else. So the potty was the logical place to put it. Some of these people, some of these parents, were actually practicing EC, didn't know that that's what it was called, but they were doing it kind of in secret because they hadn't heard that anyone else was doing this with their baby and they thought it was kind of weird. And then eventually they find out it's something we call elimination communication, they discover Go Diaper Free, and then they are able to understand a little bit better why it's all working for them. But I just think that's funny that some people kind of come in the back way to EC because they just didn't want to have to deal with the poop.

If you are in the newborn phase and you're practicing EC, you're just starting out building the sound associations. This is up to about six months old. If your baby is peeing or pooping, you can go ahead and just cue along with it and rinse it away. Same as if you were nursing or feeding your baby and they started to pee or poop in the diaper, you could just cue along rather than interrupting. Of course, if there's poop, you want to pull the plug, rinse it away. If you're using one of those little baby bathtubs that goes in the bigger bathtub or even on a kitchen counter, anything like that, there's usually a plug in it and you can rinse it away. Rinse it out with some water, do some soap, and you're good to go. You can fill the bath back up with clean water.

The strategy of just cueing along with it, of course, is in the Go Diaper Free book, so if you don't already have that, you can grab it. And you could try to, if you have an older infant, catch it in a mini potty or top hat potty. If you have one right there next to the bath, you could definitely try to do that. But even those of us that practice full-time EC, we typically aren't going for a 100% of the catches, and having a miss, whether it's in the diaper or in the bathtub, is not going to derail your EC practice. So just cue along if you are in that phase. There is Episode 190, What to Expect with EC in the Newborn Phase, that talks a little bit about this. We also have the Golden Window Newborn EC Program. So if you're just starting out EC and you want a little extra support for that, you can try the Golden Window Program.

If you've got a mobile baby, usually between six to 12 months old, again, you're not really going to need to catch everything. But if you want to try to avoid having the poop in the bathtub, you can simply state, "Wait," and airlift them to either a nearby mini potty, or a seat reducer on the toilet if it's right next to the bathtub. Be careful, they might be slippery obviously, and it could be a little bit drippy. But it's water, we can dry it up afterwards. It's more important really that the poop gets in the potty because that is a little bit of a bigger deal. So simply saying, "Wait," transferring to the potty, and reminding them that poop goes in the potty.

We also want to be a little bit gentle with this because if we startle them, and I think we've all done this at some point, but we might be alarmed that there's a poop and if we startle them, they could tense up, that sphincter could close, and then they're not going to release the rest of it into the potty. So try to be a little bit gentle about it. If they didn't finish in the bathtub and they are not finishing on the potty after a minute or two, you can clean up the bathtub, return them to the bath, and just remind them, "If you need to poop, tell Mommy. I will help you." Or, "Poop goes in the potty." Pick whatever's developmentally appropriate for your child.

For pee, you could just simply state, "You're peeing," and that is going to reinforce that mind-body connection for them to realize that, "Yes, I'm peeing." When I was at this phase with my children, I usually only had maybe a half an inch to an inch of water in the bathtub, so I could tell when they started peeing. If you have any deeper water in there, sometimes you can tell because they'll look down, but that was just easier for me so I could notice and help them notice or, if I needed to, go ahead and transfer them. Be brief with your words, have them finish their business, drain the bath, put clean water in it, return to the bath, and you can just move on.

We have a What to Expect episode for EC with a mobile baby also and that's Episode 191, so I will link that. And there's also a program, the Movers and Shakers Mobile Babies EC Program, so you can find all of that in the show notes.

Lastly with a toddler, as far as EC goes, if you're starting to wrap up, you really are shifting to the expectation that all of the poop and pee go in the potty, so this is a time where it's going to be more important to transfer them. And of course, with a potty training toddler, 18 months and older, we absolutely want to make sure that we're keeping this more of a strict mindset. Everything goes in the potty. So it'll be similar to the mobile baby, "Wait, poop goes in the potty," do as gentle a transfer as possible, and then try to help them relax and finish there.

At this stage, you could go ahead and take a little bit more time cleaning up to show them that the poop in the bathtub takes away from the bath fun and kind of interrupts that. That may encourage them to let you know and go in the potty instead of in the bath. But there's also an episode for What to Expect with EC for Young Toddlers, so this is 12 to 18 months, and that's Episode 192. And we have a program, the Passing the Baton Young Toddlers EC Program.

If you're in potty training mode, definitely grab the Tiny Potty Training Book. As far as prevention, overall, catching a pee or poop before the bath is really the best way to do it. Making sure that tank is empty before bath time. Running the bath sort of became an unintentional signal for my youngest because that was just our routine. I would put her on the potty as I was starting to warm up the water. So now, even if she's peed relatively soon before the bath, she hops right on the potty and starts peeing every time I start to warm up the bath water. So having that routine in place is going to be really helpful.

It is also an easy catch, it's one of the ins and outs. You're going to have them go potty before you put them into something, like a car seat or a high chair or the bath, and then same with coming out. Some children, after being in that nice relaxing bath, do have to poop, so we want to make sure we give them that opportunity on the way out as well. You're going to learn your child's patterns. You're going to figure out if they're more likely to poop before the bath or after, and you'll just go with that. If you offer consistently on the way out, it does teach them that they will get the opportunity at the end of every bath, and that can encourage them to wait, just like all of your other regular pottytunities. This is also one of the roads to potty time, it's a generic time. We're moving from one activity to another and it's a convenient time for people in the family to use the potty, so we're starting to build that habit. Building that habit will go a long way in preventing it happening in the bathtub.

That's it for us today, that's everything I have for you. Thanks so much for joining me. We do have the Facebook support groups for both elimination communication and potty training, so I will link those. Those are great places to ask these kinds of questions because we've got experienced parents practicing EC or potty training right along with you, and we have our coaches in there helping out as well.

If you own either of the books, Go Diaper Free or the Tiny Potty Training Book, those both come with the private online book owners community, and we have certified coaches like myself in there, helping you, encouraging you, and answering all those little “What if?” questions like this. There are also coaches available for private consultation. Many of us will do a 15 minute free consultation to help point you in the right direction, and then you can choose to work with us privately, or some even offer their own classes. So I will also link the coaches page so you can see if there's a coach in your area, and then some of us work virtually as well. That should help you out with all of these little nuances of EC and potty training.

Thank you so much for joining me again today. Again, the show notes and all the links are going to be over at godiaperfree.com/245. Thanks everyone, and we'll see you next week.

Want to catch your first pee today? Grab Andrea's free easy start guide, and do just that. It's only one page and it will change your world. Get it at godiaperfree.com/start. We'll see you next time.