"He probably peed."
Robert and I give each other a familiar exhausted, dead-eyed stare. I've just laid down after feeding the baby for an hour. Again.
He was peaceful, sleeping. I put him in his cot. He was fine. And then, suddenly, the fussing.
It's a loud squall: surprise. Then uncomfortable sobs. But our baby generally doesn't cry for no reason. Either he's hungry, or he needs a diaper change. Again.
So one of us gets up, because that's what parents do.
Having recently spent some time in diapers myself after giving birth, I can empathize with the baby. It doesn't feel good to have plastic against your skin all the time. Much worse if it's dirty or wet.
Mostly, we use disposable diapers. It's easier to toss the dirty and grab a clean one than it is to fold the cloth nappy, pin it around him, and velcro the waterproof cover. But I try to use them when I can: less plastic garbage, and I'm convinced the cotton feels better around his little body.
And there are practical reasons. A jumbo pack of 80 disposable diapers costs about £25 (~$30 USD) and we go through it in a week.
That adds up quickly. Babies will often pee, then poop, then poop and pee again right after you change them. I wince at the waste, throwing out a diaper that's only been on for five minutes.
My discomfort incentivizes habits I don't want to build: waiting a bit longer, each time, to change him so that it's all done and out of the way. Training him to sit unhealthily in his own excrement.
I don't mind the just-changed pee so much with a reusable nappy: baby boy fountains up on the changing table; the fresh cloth diaper is soaked; I throw it in the hamper and grab another one.
But it's been observed that babies often do start to pee specifically when the nappy comes off. It's not random. What if we used that?
This is one of the intuitions behind a practice called elimination communication (EC). Though it's not popular in a lot of Anglophone countries, there are parts of the world where it's normal for little ones to mostly not dirty their diapers. Plenty of families using EC report that their babies less than one year old only poop in a toilet.
Small babies might not have a ton of bladder control, but they do have an instinct to not soil themselves, given other options. They don’t poop unless they’re at least a bit conscious, and they can pee reflexively.
Babies perform excretory actions at specific times (just like you and me): when they wake up, when they get home, right after they eat. In the EC community, these are referred to as the "easy catches,” and they seem like a great place to start.
This project is not all-or-nothing. As I explain to Robert, the goal is not to catch baby’s bodily functions all the time, but to catch them at all. Each catch is one less diaper to change, and it shows baby that another way is possible.
Our little guy finds dirty diapers extremely upsetting, so I figure we have a decent shot.
Based on YouTube and Facebook groups, most people use something called a "top hat potty": you sit, holding it hat-side-down between your thighs, so you can brace baby's back against your belly and sit them on the wide brim. I can't find one for under £40 on Amazon UK, but there's a sort of hardware bodega up the road that sells a duck-shaped training toilet for £5.99. I think I can make it work.
In the morning, I've got the tiny potty set up beside the changing table. I figure that at every change, I'll hold him over it until he fusses, then change him normally.
It's tricky. He's a newborn, so his head is floppy. I try to support it with my index fingers while my hands are looped under his armpits. His onesie slips down. His feet skate along the rim of the seat, then slip down into the dry bowl. The angles are wrong: if he pees, it's well above the catchment line. The spray will come straight at me.
Would a baby prefer a squatting position, I wonder? I get his little feet to stay on the rim, his knees awkwardly inward. He fusses. I take him off the potty and change him.
I try a few different holds over the course of the day. The plastic potty slides around the tabletop unless I brace it against my belly. I flip the baby around, his spine to my belly, to support his head more easily. I get him squatting lower, feet on the rim, important bits lower into the bowl. Again and again, he fusses without going. I change him.
It's only the first day, so I'm not concerned. My goal for the day is to figure out how to make this a sustainable habit for me: something ergonomic and practical, so I can do this consistently enough that the baby expects it.
Towards evening, the baby wakes peaceful from a long nap. So he's patient as I hold him in the position that's working best. I count to sixty in my head. Nothing happens, but he still doesn't fuss, so I adjust my posture and count again. He's still patient, but maybe he just doesn't need to go. So I lift him off.
And there's something in the bowl!
"Good job, baby!" I crow.
I can't even tell if it's poop or pee, but he did something. I don't even care that he poops into his fresh diaper right after.
After I change him, baby feeds and then naps on my lap. When he starts to wake up, his back arches and his face starts to grimace.
I take him to the potty before he's fully awake, wait ten seconds, and—wonder of wonders, a little stream of urine shoots out into the pot.
"I did it! He's doing it! I caught a pee!" I exclaim to Robert, delighted.
I catch another one an hour later. The baby, who had been peacefully napping, opens his eyes and starts to squirm. I get him over the potty with his nappy off, and a few seconds later, the stream starts. So cool!
The little urine-sensing line on his diaper, I notice, has turned blue: there's a pee between these two that I've missed. But that's okay. As far as I'm concerned, we're doing it.
By the end of the evening, I've caught three pees and a small poo. Robert, convinced by my success, has also caught a pee. We've also had two or three diaper changes, but that's a significant decrease in volume.
Ultimately, it seems to be fairly comparable to the breastfeeding project: instead of bopping his head and sucking his fingers, he squirms and grunts to let us know what he needs. Caregivers and baby both have to learn how to do it. But once it's established, it seems like it will be worth the trouble—and this is a lot of progress for one day.
I think the baby already prefers the toilet over the diaper. He doesn't fuss getting on it, and after he goes, he's smiley. It requires a lot of attention to catch the pees so far, but I think it will get easier. We can do this.
Previous: Being Mammalian | Next: Officially, Recovered
Being Mammalian
When the baby was born, I immediately felt that I should rewatch all the instructional videos: how to hold a baby, feed, clothe, dress one. But before I got around to it, instinct kicked in. My hands knew how to lift him, my body made milk, and I could often guess at the reason for his cries. He didn't feel so fragile in my hands.
Officially, Recovered
Two weeks postpartum, I was summarily discharged from midwife care. It's a projected six week recovery from episiotomy stitches, but the maternity team isn't checking in anymore.