I was very proud of my potty training efforts with both of my children—but that overconfidence has quickly faded into green shame! (My melodrama is intended here…)  First, let me tell you of my brilliant potty training efforts.  My son was blissfully free of diapers at a little over two years and my daughter started regularly using the potty at about seven months.  (She’s now 14 months and still in diapers, but makes the sign for “poop” and helps us avoid toilet dunking diapers most of the time!)

So here’s my dark confession.. My son, who has worn disposables at night since babyhood, is still in diapers at night.  So even though he used cloth during the day for just a few years since infancy, he has filled the landfills with his nighttime diapers for four full years.  We buy gigantic disposables and he’s managed to still fit in them without moving to pull-ups.  Although we resolutely tried to use cloth at night multiple times, persistent rashes and yeast infections eventually wore us down.

We have tried less fluids, salty foods, waking him at night, letting him wet himself, and using treats for dry diapers, all to no avail.  He’s an extremely heavy sleeper who wakes up a bit frenzied and disoriented in the middle of the night and screams when we ask him to try and pee.

Everything I’ve read indicates that kids may take years to night train.  Even up to six years!  Still, since the rest of the world potty trains far earlier than we do here in America, it seems like the night training thing should be possible.  Do you have any ides to assuage my disposable diaper guilt?  Are you in the same boat?  Help!

I’m happy to report that our 13 month old is going strong with infant potty training!  To be clear, she still wears cloth diapers and our only focus is getting her to poop on the potty.  She started pooping on the potty at around seven months and her progress is continuing.  It means fewer poopy diapers to wash and strong steps toward actual potty training when she’s ready.  We even toted our little potty seat to Maryland with us on our family vacation and she used it many times while at her grandparents’ house.

During the trip, she started using the sign for “poop” which was even more exciting.  While we were driving home after nearly twelve hours of travel, she did the sign in the back seat along with the sign for help.  We were so exhausted and shocked that she would be able to tell us, that we didn’t stop.  When we did arrive home, she had pooped in her diaper and we felt horrid that we didn’t listen to her.

That’s the down side of this infant potty training business.  Yesterday we were on our way to blueberry picking when she needed to poop so we trooped back home, only to find she wasn’t ready.  She then filled her pants at the blueberry patch.  We have just the one potty seat so I don’t plan on toting it with us everywhere, especially when she isn’t always comfortable pooping in public restrooms.  Still, every chance that we make it to the toilet is one less poopy diaper to deal with!

I only share these stories because even though I used cloth diapers with my first child, it didn’t even occur to me to begin potty training until right around 2 years old.  He was trained by 27 months, but if I would have started sooner, I think it would have gone even faster.  In many other parts of the world, people don’t even use diapers and potty train their children very, very early.  If you have a potty seat and time on your hands, why not give it a try?

It’s official. Lately I’ve become an environmental slacker. Yes, I still compost, recycle, cloth diaper, and shop secondhand. Yes, I get a certain thrill out of using cloth grocery bags and buying in bulk. But lately I’ve committed some eco-transgressions that I feel I must acknowledge as Earth Day looms.  It isn’t quite like I’ve taken a match to the planet, (as the dramatic photo would suggest) but it doesn’t feel great to share my shortcomings.  Here goes…

My sin:
We remodeled our kitchen. In a way this seems like a good thing–but it also means that we ate lukewarm microwaved dinners off of paper plates for a few weeks. (Chinet, of course, because they’re 100% recycled!) We tried to salvage what we could of our old kitchen, but most of our built-in cabinets had to go to wood recycling. There are some heaps of stuff in the landfill that we recently added. (Ugh!)

My justification:
Our house is a thousand square feet, which is plenty of room most of the time, but we felt cramped in our old kitchen.  It hadn’t been remodeled since the house was built 51 years ago and it lacked counter space and a dishwasher. Our new kitchen is very neutral and we hope that it will last just as long. (Can you believe the average kitchen remodel happens every seven years?!) Now we have an energy star dishwasher and fridge, lots more functional space, and many more years of being able to leave a smaller carbon footprint because of the size of our home. Also, I LOVE cooking now!

My sin:
Our daughter has eaten lots of jarred baby food. We chose Earth’s Best Organic, but I really wanted to blend up homemade batches.

My justification:
My husband, who’s a stay-at-home Dad, is not overly excited about boiling and pureeing yams.  Also, during the kitchen remodel it was all we could do to get food in her mouth while washing our dishes in the tub. The good news is that now she’s eating table food and we’re done with purees!

My sin:
My children are both wearing disposable diapers at night. This is probably the most atrocious thing on my list, and it makes me feel sick that we haven’t figured out how to use cloth at night for both of them. We had some luck with Jovi in cloth, but then found she woke up more frequently.  We were too desperate for sleep to continue. Roscoe struggled with horrid yeast infections that kept recurring, so we gave up with him too.  In this picture he despairs that his mother hasn’t found an eco-friendly method of diapering him…

My justification:
My only hope is to night-train my son soon! He has been potty trained for over a year, but we have been so tired that we haven’t made a concerted effort to get him out of diapers at night. Please send me any and all advice! Maybe I’ll try cloth again with Jovi and see if she’ll sleep through the night in them. It would make me so happy to be free of disposables altogether!

Do you have transgressions to share?  Do tell!  It relieves all of us to know that we’re focused on progress instead of perfection.

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!

Thanks to all  of you who helped me begin potty training my two year old son.  It’s amazing how quickly he’s mastered it and we’re happy with the drastic reduction in diaper laundry.  The only hurdle we can’t quite seem to overcome is pooping in the potty.  Although we’ve tried to sit him alone in his room or read books with him for long periods on the potty, he can’t quite seem to master it.  He inevitably goes in his training pants, but only the solid stuff.  He’ll even pee in the potty, pull up his training pants and then poop in them just ten minutes later.  We’ve offered him treats and encouraged this step but we aren’t sure if there’s something else we should be doing.  Any ideas?

I first encountered diaper-free kids on a trip to China, where I witnessed little ones running around in split pants.  “How do parents know that they have to go?” I asked.  “Oh, they just know,” I kept hearing.  When I returned home I checked out a couple books on the subject.  Here are a few titles I found on Amazon:

Infant Potty Training: A Gentle and Primeval Method Adapted to Modern Living by Laurie Boucke

Infant Potty Basics: With or Without Diapers– The Natural Way by Laurie Boucke

The Diaper-Free Baby: The Natural Toilet Training Alternative by Christine Gross-loh

So how do parents know when their babies have to go?  They observe their children for signals and use cues  to help their babies go on a little potty rather than in a diaper.  After reading one of Laurie Boucke’s books, I vowed that one day I, too, would raise my baby diaper-free.   My main motivation was to avoid diapers altogether and save the planet.  My only problem was that I didn’t have an actual baby at the time.

A few years later, my daughter was born, and suddenly observing her signals and using cues seemed too overwhelming for me.  I am sad to report that I did not even attempt to potty train her at birth.  I still think infant potty training sounds like a great way to help out the environment.  Has anyone here given it a try?  Please post a comment–or drop us an email–and let us know how you kept your baby out of diapers!

You’ll find when you get to the potty training stage that there is a whole new arsenal of gear you just have to have:

• Pull-ups
• Cloth training pants
• Potty Chair
• Singing/talking/laughing potty chair
• Miniature urinal for boys
• Potty Ring
• Travel Potty Ring
• Step stool
• “Incentives” (e.g., candy, stickers, toys)
• A peeing doll
• “How to Toilet Train Your Child” instructional books/ DVDs for you
• “How to Abandon the Diapers” inspirational books/ DVDs for your child
• Underwear
• Waterproof mattress cover
• Extra sheets

So what do you really need? Well, I would like to say I simply took away the diapers and introduced the underwear, and that was that. There’s something to be said for the cold turkey approach to toilet training: the child quickly learns that no diapers = big mess and then takes it upon himself to jump up on the toilet and take care of business.

We ended up buying a little potty before Audrey was two. I like the idea of skipping the potty and letting kids learn on the regular toilet, but she just seemed so little and uncoordinated at the time. What if she fell in and became traumatized forever? She did enjoy sitting on the potty but it did not inspire her to take any action for several months, and we didn’t do much to push her along.

Throughout our potty training adventures, I ended up getting her a few of the listed items above: cloth training pants, a potty ring, incentives in the form of unnatural and not-exactly-organic chocolate candy, and of course underwear. While I’d like to claim that she trained on her own without any help from potty training products, I found everything I bought helpful.

What were your potty training essentials? What can you skip altogether? Help other parents avoid some unnecessary purchases (and save the world from one more singing potty chair).

If you’re lucky, your child will make a seamless transition from full-time diapers to full-time underwear.  That said, it’s pretty common for most kids to phase the diapers out gradually: at first they cut down during the day, then they’re “day trained,” and then–sometimes years later (according to my sources)–they stop needing diapers for naps and overnights.

We are in one of these transitional phases now.  While my daughter does not need a diaper while she’s awake, she still wears one while she sleeps.   I’ve been using cloth diapers since she was born and never want to buy another pack of disposables again, so I’m continuing with cloth diapers even now that I have much less diaper laundry to do.  This leaves me with a diaper conundrum:

If I wash my diapers just as frequently as before–that is to say, every three or four days–I’ll be wasting a lot of water and energy on partial loads.

But!

If I wait until I have a full load of diapers, I’ll be letting wet diapers fester in the diaper pail for almost three weeks.

So what is a water conservationist who does not want to smell a three-week-old diaper pail to do?  My solution was simple, though it may gross some clean freaks out a bit: I wash a small load of diapers every week.   I feel comfortable washing them this infrequently because they are always just wet diapers–no dirty diapers now that she’s day trained.  Because I have so few diapers even after a week, I hang them to dry.  I could never do this before Audrey became day trained because I couldn’t wait for several days for her diapers to dry on the rack during Oregon’s drizzly months.   Now I have so many spare diapers that I can afford to wait.

One day I will no longer need to wash any diapers, but until then, I’ll stick with my once-a-week method.  This compromise should please both my inner tree hugger and inner clean freak.

Since we often learn heaps from our wise readers, we’ve decided to ask a question each week and see how much information we can gather from our green parenting peers.  Thanks so much for contributing the wisdom you’ve gained from your time in the trenches with your little ones.   If you’d like to propose your own parenting question, we can feature it sometime soon for our Saturday question and you’ll get some great advice!

Joy’s Question: 

My son is 2 years and 3 months old and we’ve started casually potty training.  He goes to daycare during the week for partial days and spends the rest of his time with us, but he seems to only be alternately excited about sitting on the potty.  Sometimes he’s totally into it, and on other occasions he utterly refuses.  Many experts advise waiting until your child is really excited about potty-training, but I wonder if he’d do better if we actually invested more energy into his efforts.  Maybe if we were more consistent he’d do better.  So, should we wait or should we use a few time-tested tricks for piquing his interest in the potty?  

When I started potty training Audrey, I wasn’t planning on buying disposable Pull-ups or even cloth training pants.  I just took her out of diapers and put her into underwear.  This actually worked, for the most part.  But then Audrey’s daycare provider said she was on board with potty training, but that Audrey would need to wear training pants.  I guess she wasn’t up for my “just wear underwear” technique, which admittedly results in a puddle here and there. 

So I looked around.  Our big grocery store carried Gerber training pants, but they didn’t carry them in Audrey’s size–ever.  I stopped by a drug store, which had disposable training pants, but no cloth ones.  Then I popped into two children’s consignment stores and came out empty handed.  Who knew cloth training pants were such a rare commodity?

Finally I remembered a Hannah Anderson gift certificate I’d had since Audrey’s birth.  They have a store downtown, so I ventured out there and bought a set of three adorable little training pants for $28.50—cheaper than Imse Vimse training pants, which cost about $12 each.  (By comparison, a jumbo pack of 88 Pull-ups costs over $30.00.) 

The Hannah Anderson pants are made from 100% organic cotton and don’t have a plastic layer.  In other words, they are not water proof, which is just what I wanted.  A child in these training pants will feel wetness and won’t be tempted to treat them as a diaper.  (At least this has been our experience.)  They’re also absorbent enough to prevent those pesky puddles, so they definitely work for me. 

Audrey is potty trained now, and I never needed to buy more training pants or a pack of Pull-ups.  I can personally attest to the fact that a life without Pull-ups is possible!  Although she didn’t need training pants for very long, she still wears them and thinks of them as regular underwear, so I consider it money well spent. 

For more great Works for Me Wednesday tips, head on over to Rocks in My Dryer––and please join us for our Thrifty Green Thursday carnival this week!