Showing posts with label natural parenting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label natural parenting. Show all posts

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Teeth!

My last post was titled Sleep! and I ended by making a comment about how Leo would probably start teething and ruin it all....
well....

A couple days ago Leo was chewing on my finger (which isn't that unusual) and I felt something sharp!  His first tooth had popped through without me even noticing!  An adorable little bottom tooth.
Little guy showed no signs of teething other than a lot of drool, which he's been doing since the day he turned 9 weeks old.  I remember.

I was like wow this is way too good to be true! I could see the white of his 2nd tooth pushing up next to it and thought oh great he'll be getting a tooth right when we're flying to Ohio!
A fussy baby on a plane AND fussy baby in front of all the people I've been telling over and over again how good he always is.

Well that was 3 days ago and he has been more irritable than usual.  He hasn't been eating that well (solid foods) and nursing more often and last night he woke up twice in the night.   Poor little guy!!!
This morning I can feel both teeth through on the bottom so I hope the worse of that is over and we get a couple weeks of relief while we're traveling!!

We've decided to hold off on any type of pain intervention with Leo unless his teething pain gets a lot worse.  He's never had any type of medication and I'd like to keep it that way.  I also have read some pretty weird stuff about the teething tablets and the amber necklaces... so we won't be going that route either.
And in case you didn't hear the FDA came out and said no more baby Orajel!  So read up about that before you give your baby any type of numbing gel for teething!  http://www.webmd.com/fda/benzocaine-babies-not-good-mix


I'll be gone when Leo turns 7 months so I'll have to catch up on that post later.  But I'll give a quick little bit.  So much has been happening this month!

Leo can now crawl anywhere  he wants and as fast as he wants.  He will follow me all around the house and if he sees something he wants he makes a mad dash for it!  His favorite of course are electrical cords.  The only cords ever visible are our laptop chargers and he acts like it's Christmas morning when he can get his little hands on one!
Every morning I rearrange the living room putting the computers up and turning our coffee table sideways to block him in!

And as soon as he mastered crawling he wanted to pull up on everything.  He seriously tries to climb the walls!! He's not that steady yet so this also means lots of tumbles and bumping of his little head if he can get to something to climb while I'm not watching.
His favorite climbing toy though is Lee or I.  We lay in the floor with him and he goes to town climbing all over us and pulling himself up to a standing position.  He's so cute, but it makes me sad my baby is getting way way too big!

He's currently napping after a big early lunch of sweet potatoes, chicken, and apple sauce.  Dude loves to eat!  I'm pretty sure his mouth is feeling better because he just ate like 6 oz of food and nursed...... that diaper should be fun later.
Probably as soon as we get in the air on the plane.

Thankfully it's only a 2 hour flight!


If I haven't said it yet, solid food diapers are the nastiest thing ever.  Thankfully this week I was able to catch one on the toilet................. but only 1.  :/  We're still working on it, but we'll probably take a break while we're in Ohio.  Hopefully Nanny likes to change diapers......



Leo helped me pack his suitcase :)  As you can tell he's pretty excited to wear his long sleeved clothes!




Monday, August 18, 2014

My 5 month old uses the toilet...

Catchy title huh?
But I'm serious.

Let me explain...

A little back story -
When I was pregnant and trying to convince Lee to use cloth diapers one day he said to me "what do mothers in places without access to diapers do?"  This lead to a little research and discovering that these mothers basically learn to read their baby's signals and take them outside or hold them away from their body when they need to go.  Then I found that there is this entire "thing" call Elimination Communication.  I thought it sounded interesting, but quickly forgot about it with all the other things to think about with a new baby and deciding to do cloth diapers was more than enough for me when it came to Leo's bodily functions...

Flash forward several months and my friend Sarah read my post about cloth diapering and shared with me that her little one was potty trained quite early and that she had avoided changing poopy diapers since she 2 months old!! I was DEFINITELY intrigued and now that I knew a real person who had done this I dove into some serious research.

Wikipedia says Elimination Communication is a practice in which a caregiver uses timing, signals, cues, and intuition to address an infant's need to eliminate waste. Caregivers try to recognize and respond to babies' bodily needs and enable them to urinate and defecate in an appropriate place (e.g. a toilet). Caregivers may use diapers as a back-up in case of misses some or all of the time, or not at all. EC emphasizes communication between the caregiver and child, helping them both become more attuned to the child's innate rhythms and control of urination and defecation. The term "elimination communication" was inspired by traditional practices of diaper-less baby care in less industrialized countries and hunter-gatherer cultures. Some practitioners of EC begin soon after birth, the optimum window being zero to four months, although it can be started with babies of any age. The practice can be done full-time, part-time, or just occasionally.

Ok, so that is a little intense.  It's not nearly as crazy as it sounds, but I also don't really consider what I'm doing Elimination Communication and I'm definitely not going diaper-free like some people do!  I'd call my approach - offer the baby the option.... alternative baby elimination habits... infant toilet users.
I'm not sure. Sometime more catchy than those...


Leo was 5 months old when I started looking into this and I'd like to consider myself a pretty aware mother and while I knew Leo's patterns I had no clue about what to look for.  I only knew he was peeing or pooping once it was already happening!

After reading and reading and reading I decided the only way to see if it'd work for us was to just go for it. So I sat Leo on the toilet and he just started peeing!! It was insane!! I was like the craziest person yelling "Yay Leo!!!! Good boy!! Going pee-pee!!" hahahaha Leo just sat there staring at me like I was insane. Which I am.
I text Lee right away.
Crazy parents.

The very first day he went 3 times on the toilet.
I was HOOKED.

It's a very addicting... kinda like a game.  Can I catch him? Can I avoid having a dirty diaper today?
And with cloth diapers, the less dirty ones, the less laundry.

So I began offering Leo the chance to use the toilet at different times during the day.
First of all, he is a morning pooper (if you're not a mother I apologize... I would have never been interested in reading about a baby's bathroom habits pre-motherhood. lol)  It's usually around 7:30am after he nurses and is awake for the day when I finally drag myself out of bed and take him to the bathroom.  95% of the time he will go pee and poo!

Then I try again before and after naps, after nursing, before a bath, and any time we leave the house.  If he doesn't have to he'll instantly get squirmy when his tush hits the seat.  If he has to go he'll sit still and concentrate.  It's the most adorable thing, if using the bathroom can be adorable.
It still excites me every single time he goes!

If I am being very proactive I can catch the majority of his pees and all of his poos!  Often he'll wake up from a nap completely dry!

The most important thing to remember with this is that there is no pressure on the baby to go.  He's 5 months old.  Dude doesn't really know what's going on.  It's not potty training.  If he goes in his diaper it's no big deal.  And like Wikipedia said, it can be done part time or just occasionally.  Although I did put him on the potty at church on Sunday, I don't do it out in public typically.  They make things you can buy to put over the toilet seat, but for now I'm not investing any money and I don't want my baby near a public toilet!

I'm basically just trying to learn my baby and offer him the chance to pee and poo on the toilet to avoid having both me changing him and him sitting in a dirty diaper.

So you may thing I am absolutely crazy. Which is ok, I'm sort of used to it. This definitely isn't for everyone!  I'm home with Leo all day and have the opportunity to try this out.
I'm just here to open your mind for you to consider something you might not have before!

Here are a couple resources:

http://eliminationcommunication.wordpress.com/ (I recommend)

http://www.webmd.com/parenting/features/bye-bye-diapers

http://www.naturalbirthandbabycare.com/elimination-communication/


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