Baby Potty Training Cuts down on Diaper Use
It sounds a bit crazy, doesn’t it? Asking a tiny baby to be able to control her bodily functions? I thought so too. These days I’m firmly aboard the early potty training bandwagon now that my eight month old baby regularly poops on the potty.
I wouldn’t have remotely thought about perching my first child on the toilet simply because I had no friends or family who had ever attempted it. But when we wrote our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide: Down-To-Earth Ways for Parents to Save Money and the Planet, I learned more about infant potty training and found it fascinating.
My daughter’s first poop on the potty was a total accident. She was perched on our wood floor, bare bottomed due to a slight diaper rash. When she started to strain a bit, my husband and I scooped her up and set her on the potty. It worked!
Motivated by the opportunity to avoid toilet-dunking poopy diapers, we started paying attention to her schedule and found that she needed to sit on the potty once in the morning, and then again after each meal. Sure enough, we found ourselves having only one poopy diaper a day, if that, in the days and weeks that followed. Sometimes she’s hesitant to sit, but if we distract her with a toy she’s happy to oblige. Here she is looking quite proud of her efforts!
If this sounds totally bizarre, remember that in most of the world, people don’t use diapers. Infants potty train in China, India, and much of Latin America. In the U.S. people used to toilet train children much younger when cloth diapers were used.
The only down side to our new potty training lifestyle, is that we have a one bathroom house. Now there are four people trying to share one toilet, which means sometimes we can’t get her to the bathroom on time. Also, we don’t even remotely try to toilet train her while we’re traveling because it seems far too complicated. Still, we celebrate every avoided diaper dunk and the drastic cut it has made in our pile of dirty prefolds! Check back with us on Wednesday to watch the video of Jovi having one of her poops with plenty of slobbery zerberts throughout! (I think she may really resent this video in the years to come!)
Have you tried perching your babe on the potty? Any luck?
Speaking of luck, we have to congratulate Rose for winning last Friday’s giveaway of peppermint shower infusers. We hope she uses them to get revitalized for the tough job of motherhood. Stay tuned this month for our next few fabulous green baby giveaways!
Baby Food Brownies
Again, be sure to comment about it below!
Diaper launderer, baby food chef, milk producer, house cleaner, nose wiper, and bath giver. As parents, our work is never done and it often seems as though there is no time to refresh our energy reserves. Still, I notice that when I do take time to soak in a bubble bath or journal in silence, I am so much more effective as a mom. How do you take care of yourself? Do you have trouble finding a moment to relax? You’re in luck!
If you want one for an infant:
If you want to bike with baby:
Today is the day. For three years, hundreds of days and thousands of hours, Rebecca and I have written, rewritten, and polished our manuscript for 
There’s much, much more in our baskets so stop by each week to see what you could win.
This winter I discovered 
Some of you talented knitters could probably whip a pair of these up in no time. For the rest of us, you can order 
I’ve breastfed in pizza parlors, grocery store aisles, dressing rooms, airports, buses, my car, restaurants, friends’ houses, and while walking through the zoo toting my babe in her Ergo carrier. I once breastfed her in church during silent meditation in the hopes of quieting her for a few moments. It backfired, resulting in lots of loud slurping sounds which echoed through the room–causing smiles to appear on several faces.
