What is Elimination Communication?

Did you know that you can start potty-training your baby as young as birth?  This is what parents have been doing for thousands of years! Sometimes called baby potty-training, Elimination Communication (EC) is the process of learning and responding to your infant’s cues that he or she needs to pee or poop.

How to hold a newborn over a potty

Newborns have instincts to not soil themselves, which is why new parents often find that their little one waits until the diaper has been removed to go pee or poop.  If you hold a diaperless newborn over a potty in a squat and say "pss pss", the baby will instinctively pee or poop.  How cool is that?

You can also hold a newborn over the toilet for easy cleanup!

When a baby is diapered 24/7, the baby learns that the diaper is the appropriate place to use the bathroom. This habit must later be un-learned during potty-training, a process which is often delayed until age 3 or 4 in Western society.

EC parents, on the other hand, take advantage of the baby’s instincts and offer the potty at key moments such as diaper changes, after feeding, and upon waking. In time, the parents learn their child’s timing and cues and the child learns that the potty is the appropriate place to eliminate. EC children are typically diaper-free at a much younger age than children who are diapered full-time.

Although it may seem like a lot of work, EC can be practiced successfully on a part-time basis. Many parents focus mainly on catching poop and “easy” pees, like when the baby wakes up from a nap. The rest of the time, the parents use an EC-friendly diaper backup, like Flappy-Nappies^® and Chappy-Nappies, to keep any missed pee or poop nicely contained.  This stress-free strategy has many benefits over full-time diapering, such as fewer diaper blowouts, less diaper rash, and simpler cloth diaper laundry.

Getting Started is Easy!

At Flappy-Nappies®, we have all the resources you need to start the potty.  My full book on EC includes how to start, how to navigate common challenges, how to ditch the diapers for good (and how to tell it's time), plus other important topics such as daycare, travel, bedwetting, and more.

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