Honor is officially an EC graduate! Our journey with elimination communication has definitely been different from any of my other babies, but it was a really satisfying experience.

Slow Starts and New Arrivals

Honor was a very late walker. She cruised a little late, then limited herself to that for months on end. She finally took her first steps the day she turned 19 months and was off like a rocket at that point.

Corwin arrived exactly 1 month later, so I wasn't really expecting that we'd make much progress with pottying. I was happy getting her to the pot for poops and some of her pees. Otherwise, diapers kept the carpet clean!

The Rash

Just before Corwin was born I started having some misses for Honor's poops. After Corwin arrived the misses got to be just about every time. It was pretty disheartening for me, but especially for Scott. He felt like it was his fault because he was the one taking care of her (he was off of work for a couple of weeks after the birth). I assured him we'd started having misses just before Corwin arrived.

I think she just felt change in the air.

All of these misses led to a huge diaper rash, the likes of which we'd never seen! It was so bad, and nothing was helping, not even creams.

Time for Diaper Free

Scott and I talked about it and decided what Honor really needed was to be diaper free – completely. We decided that we'd ditch daytime diapers for at least a few days and clean up any messes that came along. At this point Corwin was around 4 weeks old and I was up and about to watch Honor closely.

Honor was not happy with the change. She spent the morning bringing me diapers, trying desperately to convince me to put one on her. When I wasn't calmly returning diapers to their bin (trying not to laugh), I was watching her. It slowly began to dawn on me that she wasn't having accidents.

She begrudgingly went with me to the potty. If she wasn't on the potty, she held it.

I was shocked. I tracked Honor's diaper usage last fall and she wet approximately every 20 minutes… heavily. Suddenly, without diapers, she was holding it for 2-3 hours. When she went, she went a lot. But she didn't go sit on the potty every 20 minutes.

Honor had a couple of “accidents” that she promptly stopped as soon as she felt pee running down her leg. Stopped it and started crying. She did not like that feeling!

Into Panties

Honor quickly gave up trying to bring me diapers – she realized we were not going put them back on her during the day. In just a couple of days she went from diapers every 20 minutes to total dryness with a potty trip every couple of hours. I was amazed.

I started debating underwear. I'd read about making a smooth transition to underwear/clothes in Go Diaper Free, where Andrea recommended going straight to underwear if you felt comfortable with it (trainers feel like diapers). I decided that would be best for Honor, so I ordered a set of undies for her.

She was ecstatic when they arrived, taking to them and loving them immediately. She almost always wears dresses, so it was simple to pull up her undies and pull them down to show her how they work (I also demonstrated that Mama wears undies). She knew immediately that they're different than diapers and has only had a couple of accidents.

We've also gone out with no problems – she's fine holding it and she wears her undies. I lined her carseat with an absorbant pad “just in case,” but she's never wet.

Nighttime

After a week of panties, Honor began to get upset when Scott put her in her nighttime diaper. We talked about it and decided we'd try her diaper-free at night over the weekend. To our surprise, she began staying dry overnight as soon as we left off the diaper.

She even wears panties to bed now. This is incredibly suprising because the older four children have all bedwet – Galen still does. But Honor stays dry consistently, with only having a couple of nights with a wet bed for weeks now.

EC'ing Honor has been totally filled with surprises, from her early days where I had to learn to rely totally on intiuition and timing (she didn't cue), to her developing clear cues around a year old, to decided to be totally potty trained with almost no effort (on my part) at 20 months.

She is such an amazing little girl – with so many things to teach her mama!

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