Since Charlotte was born, I've toyed with the idea of doing Elimination Communication (EC) with her. I have a few friends who do/did this with their children, and I remember Baba, my grandmother, talking about how she did it with her children (she didn't call it EC, but that's pretty much what she did). When Charlotte was born, I could tell her signals fairly easily, but I didn't do much with it. We were in the midst of potty training with Kieran, which was a chore in itself, and I told myself I'd wait until Charlotte could sit up well.
Once she started sitting up, I gave it a few tries, but wasn't consistent, and she didn't seem to enjoy sitting on the toilet too much. We were still working with Kieran, and I thought it was just too much to also try to do EC. I figured I just wasn't quite crunchy enough, and that was fine, so I stopped trying with it. I did still notice her cues, at least some of the time, I just didn't get her to the toilet.
Fast forward to the past week or two. I'm getting fed up with how long potty training is taking; part of the reason for that may be because I couldn't work with him much during my pregnancy, and haven't always been able to work with him and chase after Charlotte. I really don't want a repeat of this. So, I started trying EC with Charlotte again, and we've had some success! Kieran gets a kick out of cuing her, too. She always tries to go if I cue her, and once she's even told me she needed to go so I could get her to the toilet. No, she didn't use words, but made it clear to me that she needed the toilet. No, other people probably wouldn't have known that's what she wanted, but then, others don't know her other signs for hunger and other things, either. At the very least Charlotte has an awareness of her own body and knows that the diaper isn't ideal. It really isn't a hassle, either - no more so than changing a nappy. So maybe I am crunchy enough. I will try this with future children, too, though I still doubt I'm crunchy enough to do it from birth.
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