The E.C. Baby at 20 months

Tommy is such a big boy now. Yesterday TM heard some rustling in the bathroom and entered to see her "baby" lifting the toilet lid and putting his potty seat into place. "Pee!" he stated, rather matter-of-factly. Although when he says it, it sounds more like "Bee."

TM asked, "Do you need to go potty?"

"Botty!" responded Tommy, patting his underpants.

Actually, he had already gone pee pee, but hey, at least he realized it! After being placed upon the potty seat, he peed some more. "Ganny?" asked Tommy. (That's how it sounds when he says "candy") Yes, yes, his mother started the bad habit of giving him a Skittle for going on the potty. She only gives it to him if he asks, and often he forgets to ask.

So, as you can see, things are going pretty well in the E.C. world of Tommy Gunnar. Some days he only wets in his underpants once or twice. Other days, he never makes it to the potty. TM relies primarily on timing, that is, taking him to the  potty every so often . But occasionally Tommy initiates the visits to the potty. Right now he is learning to remove his own underpants so that he can sit on the potty chair all by himself.  It has only been in the last couple of weeks that he has shown any interest in that contraption at all. The toilet is his preferred place for relieving himself.

Bowel movements are a completely different story. He doesn't seem to mind leaving a crap in his pants. But he wants someone to clean it up pretty quickly! He still gives no sign at all. Usually he comes to me right after and says "Bee." At this point one wonders if this is just a girl vs. boy thing. The first E.C. baby in this family was a girl, and BMs were the easiest thing.  Nearly every single one after she was about 2 months old was caught. The second and third E.C. babies are boys, and they don't give signs about pooping.

When he's on the toilet and has either finished going potty or doesn't have to go, he proclaims, "I done!" From the time he makes that proclamation, there is no point in encouraging further activity. When he says he's done, he IS done.

Pictures coming soon...

The Signal That Couldn't Be Ignored

Today TM lifted Tommy up onto her lap at his request of "Mah! Mah!"

As soon as he was seated he grabbed his crotch, tugged on his little romper and yelled "Ahhhhhh"

Tommy's Mommy asked, "Do you need to go potty?"

"Paaahhhh" responded the little cutie.

After unsnapping the crotch snaps of the romper and removing Tommy's underpants, TM placed him on the Little Potty. He smiled and sat there for approximately 2 seconds.  He dislikes the potty chair and has yet to pee pee in it. "Let's go potty," said TM. Tommy stood up and started toddling down the hallway towards the bathroom. This is the cutest thing ever, and it MUST be captured on video. He was saying something like, "heh! heh! heh!"

When he arrived in the bathroom he patted the toilet lid and shouted, "PAH!"

TM took up her place on the step stool in front of the toilet, lifted the lid, placed the potty seat on top of the toilet seat and hoisted Tommy onto the seat. He immediately began making a grunting noise. He sometimes does this when he pees, perhaps because as soon as he starts grunting, who ever else happens to be in the room will start grunting with him, which is amusing.

Then Tommy peed in the toilet. A catch! Yippee! Right, right, the books say not to make a big deal of it. Try to state very matter-of-factly "You went pee." But hey, around this household, we tend to get excited about things like that, so Tommy will just have to get used to it.

Pee, Pee and More Pee

As soon as he awoke this morning, Tommy was taken to the toilet for his first morning void. Like so many others, that first one in the morning can take awhile. He peed and peed and peed. Then he made the sign for "all done" and he was taken off the toilet.

At that point, TM needed to do some chores in the laundry room, so Tommy followed her there. Thankfully the flooring in the laundry room is vinyl because Tommy wasn't wearing his undies and during the 5 minutes he was in there he piddled on the floor 5 times! And not just a dribble each time, either.

Obviously he is blessed with a large capacity bladder

Oh, by the way, he didn't give any sign or signal of any sort that was perceivable to TM before he urinated on the floor. He didn't seem bothered by it at all after the first time, which soaked his socks.

TM is reminded of the advice she has been given by every EC book she's read - after a miss, always give them a chance to sit on the potty, because they might not be finished.

A New Development

Tommy has started doing something very exciting! He is now just over 13 months old and yesterday he walked to the bathroom door (it was closed to keep him from playing in the toilet) and said "pee pee". Actually it was his cute, baby version of "pee pee" which sounded more like "pah".

Today, he did it again. After peeing a tiny bit in his underwear he headed for the bathroom to finish the job.

TM decided to try to get away from diapers altogether and has been contemplating how to accomplish it. The first step has been to switch from using the prefold diapers and diaper belt to using Gerber Training Pants
during the day while at home.

Tommy will need some more pairs of undies because his older brother has put a lot of wear on the ones he has now. Unfortunately, it is impossible to find the 18 month size training pants in stores, so they will have to be ordered from Amazon.

For times away from home and for nighttime, Tommy will be transitioning to All in One Waterproof Training Pants
from the disposable diapers he is using now. These are also made by Gerber and are available on Amazon.

You may have read the blog entry about Tommy's birthday here. If so, you know he received a new potty chair as a gift. The goal being to keep the old potty chair in the car and have a new potty chair to keep inside the house on a permanent basis.

If you read TM's review of the potty chair, you will know that she wasn't too impressed with it. As a matter of fact, she returned it to Target over the weekend for a full refund. Returning it was simple. Target didn't seem to mind at all.

In the end, it just wasn't usable. It will be replaced with this model
as soon as anyone in the household makes an order from Amazon. After it has been thoroughly tested you will find a review right here. Stayed tuned.

Birth Story of Tommy Gunnar

This blog is dedicated to a single subject. It was planned like that as a way of reaching out to other parents who are interested in EC, to let them have a glimpse into the life of one family who does it. TM didn't want those other parents, most of whom are complete strangers, to be forced to search for the EC bits amongst the volumes of posts about Tommy's siblings, her trip to the grocery store, her unhappiness with the weather, etc.

However, TM knows that sometimes parents who share views in one area of parenting may share views in other areas. This is likely the case with EC and natural child birth. Actually, natural child birth is something about which TM is very passionate, unlike EC, about which she is merely highly interested.

For the reason stated in the first paragraph, TM has chosen not to post the birth story of Tommy Gunnar here on this blog. You can find a link here, to TM's daughter's account of the event. Or you can navigate directly to the daughter's blog to read it.

You can also see the birth on the net by going here.

Now, for the purpose of this post. TM has another blog where she posts her thoughts that no one would care to read, but she's saving them for a book to be published after her death. Anyway, she has posted over there her own description of the labor and birth of Tommy. Some people like to read birth stories, and if you are one of those people, feel free to read it. But before you go there, be warned that it contains some brief references to intimate relations between TM and Tommy's Papa. They are tasteful and not overly graphic, but they are there.

Also, if stories about home birth, and particularly unassisted home birth, and particularly unassisted home water birth cause you to become violent and foam at the mouth because you believe the ONLY proper place for birth is on dry land in a hospital, then do YOURSELF a favor and don't read Tommy's birth story.

The warning has been sufficient, do NOT come back here and comment on how you were ambushed by the private moments mentioned in the birth story, ok?

The Unassisted Home Water Birth of Tommy Gunnar

Video Review: "Potty Whispering" by Laurie Boucke

In this post it was noted that Infant Potty Training: A Gentle and Primeval Method Adapted to Modern Living authoress Laurie Boucke had produced a DVD titled Potty Whispering: The Gentle Art of Infant Potty Training. Because TM is a big fan of The Dog Whisperer , Cesar Millan, and has read, enjoyed and gleaned much from Infant Potty Training, she assumed that this new DVD would be a good thing. (to borrow a term from Martha Stewart) She was not disappointed.

Tommy's Mommy shall attempt to describe the video to her readers in a manner that will accomplish two goals. The first is that her readers will gain a general understanding of the format and content of the video. The second goal is for this review to actually aid the reader in making an educated decision about whether purchasing this video is a wise and useful choice for a parent learning to communicate with her infant about elimination.

By the way, TM is not above making a shameless plug here about her activities as an Amazon Associate. If one her readers should elect to purchase the DVD from Amazon and uses the above link to navigate to Amazon, TM would get paid a commission from Amazon. Something like 10% . So far, TM has yet to make one cent from being an Amazon Associate, but she remains hopeful.

One of the first things noticed upon opening the DVD case is that it contains not one but actually two disks. The first disk contains the documentary. The second disk contains additional footage that was apparently shot in producing the documentary, but which had to be edited to usable bits and bites. This disk contains complete interviews with ECing families, doctors, psychologists, etc.

In analyzing the format of Potty Whispering, TM was at first tempted to think that it was horribly organized. Or perhaps not organized at all. But further reflection reminded her that she had very similar opinions about Laurie Boucke's book, Infant Potty Training. What follows is an attempt to get into the mind of Laurie Boucke and explain why the material in both her book and documentary video are indeed organized, even if TM would not have chosen the particular style of organization in sharing this material.

The problem for TM (or maybe it's a strength for TM and a problem for Mrs. Boucke) is that TM is a very logical and linear organizer. Her brain is sort of like a file cabinet where things are filed alphabetically, by category or in ordinal rank (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.) In Infant Potty Training and Potty Whispering, the content is sorted by category and the exact same content sometimes appears more than once, under different headings. Boucke does this for the benefit of people who don't want to read an entire book, but rather, want to quickly get information on a particular issue. If TM had written the book, she would have started at the beginning with "What is EC", and then moved on to "Why do it" and then "How to get started" and so on. But Boucke is not trying to give us her own personal story or even a "how to" manual necessarily. Instead she offers a compilation of research, resources and the personal experiences of others who have successfully used infant potty training in a variety of cultures and circumstances.

Here is an example of how TM would sort a big pile of fruit compared to how Boucke might do it. (It's just for fun... don't take this too seriously)

If faced with a huge basket of fruit and the command to "sort it", TM would just line it up from smallest to largest. The order would be completely objective. There would be no question about how each fruit would line up in relation to the other fruit. Boucke, on the other hand, would first arrange the fruit according to color. Then she would rearrange it into groups of fruits with edible seeds and fruits without edible seeds. Then into tree fruits, bush fruits and ground fruits. Then into those that have to be peeled and those that don't. In her world, the same fruit goes in several different piles, depending upon what you are looking for in a fruit. That is how she organized her book and video. Does that make sense?

So, now that format has been covered, the content comes into the spotlight, and here is where Boucke shines. Her expertise on this subject is probably unmatched by anyone else in the world. Not because she might be the most successful mother who ever practiced EC, but because she has done the most work to collect all the known data on the subject and to make it available to the average parent. Through interviews with researchers and her own narration she covers all the anthropological information, including data on how EC is practiced in non-western and primitive cultures. There is a discussion on the history of EC in western culture and how it is different from coercive forms of "early toilet training" as practiced earlier in the last century in the U.S. And, of course, there are the interviews with parents and videos of the cutest babies going pee pee and poo poo on cue.

There are modern experts like doctors and therapists explaining why EC is not the least bit harmful to babies and how the notion that children can't control their sphincters until 18 months or later has never been tested or verified and is a bunch of bunk. As a matter of fact, every day that "fact" is disproved by babies all over the planet, including right here in North America.

The second disk contains some interesting video and interviews. Particularly delightful is the story of Annabelle, a 14 month old girl that is toilet trained. The only thing her mother does is help her pull her panties up and down. The girl signs and verbalizes when she needs to pee or poo, she walks down the hall to the bathroom, does her business... everything. Another family testimony on disk two shows twin 18 month old girls who have two potties in several different rooms in their house so they never have to wait for access.

For those who have read Infant Potty Training, you will be glad to see a couple of the stars from that book, siblings by the names of Sarah and Beau. Not only is there video from when they were babies, but recent interviews with them, many years after they graduated from potty training. It is amusing to watch Sarah, watching herself for the first time as a baby on a TV interview show. She also comments on whether she would choose to practice EC with her own children someday.

There is footage of Boucke doing interviews on television. While TM hates to be critical of someone who has done so much to make the marvelous option of EC knowable to her, it is difficult not to notice that she tends to look quite frumpy on video. Her hair is stringy and unkempt looking. Nearly every woman seeing this will be silently thinking, "Wow. If I knew I was going to be on TV, I would at least comb my hair." This is no joke. It distracts from the beautiful message. Her voice is also boring and monotone. Perhaps she should have hired one of those British guys that narrate PBS nature documentaries. Don't you always come away after watching one of those feeling like a real smarty pants? I think it's the accent.

Another thing you should know is that much of video and photography is old. It was probably filmed with home video quality VHS cam-corders, without the benefit of proper lighting or studio sound. The narrator points this out at the beginning and is unapologetic about it. There is no need to apologize. Obviously she wasn't working with a Hollywood film studio budget and she's been at it for over a decade, maybe as long as two. The work needed to be made in spite of the lack of high quality production. Parents can't wait for someone rich to start from scratch using the latest technologies and a crew of hundreds to fan out all over the world to capture this story.

In spite of these limitations, the scope is far reaching. Experts from Europe, the U.S. and the far east have appearances in the film. The quality of the information presented doesn't suffer in the least for its lack of fancy, splashy presentation.

So, is this a valuable asset to the video library of an EC parent? Absolutely. If you need data to help you make a decision about EC or to defend your choice with well-meaning but nay-saying family and friends, you will find it here. Does your husband want to find out more about EC, but he doesn't have the time or inclination to read a stack of books? Let him watch this video.

TM's favorite thing about Potty Whispering is that nothing conveys the simplicity of EC like a few clips of babies being pottied by their parents. Much like an episode of the Dog Whisperer, where Cesar Millan changes the behavior of what was considered to be an incorrigible dog in about 8 seconds, Potty Whispering undoes years of incorrect thought about the awareness that an infant has about his elimination needs. He DOES know when he has to pee. He CAN communicate with his parents about it. He CAN hold it until he gets to the potty place. He CAN pee and poop on cue.