This is my story… (part 1)

(part 1)

It started with a book, when I was pregnant. This book was a gift from an acquaintance who I trusted deeply, and it is called The Continuum Concept.

Everything in this book made so much sense to me and although I hadn’t thought about what kind of parent I wanted to be before my daughter was born, once I had her I fell right into the attachment camp. We co-slept out of necessity and used the sling non-stop, partly because I found her crying unbearable so we spent hours rocking, walking in the sling & up & down stairs, comforting and feeding her to stop her from crying.

One of the things this book mentions is how indigenous people in intact communities don’t use nappies and instead help their babies eliminate in the right place.

I was intrigued and yet I didn’t know anyone who had even heard of this thing (which is called Elimination Communication). Somehow, among the haziness of the newborn days I found the courage to take my baby’s nappy off and hold her over the sink.

I kid you not, two days later she’d got the hang of it. I went from changing 8 poo nappies to changing 2. And I was able to start using cloth nappies, which I had wanted to do but couldn’t bear to when she was pooing so often.

(*A tangent here for a special mention to the health visitor who told me “it was wrong” that my baby was pooing 8 x times/day. Thank you.)

She was a textbook EC baby: no potty pauses or strikes, she stopped pooing in her nappy at 10 months and used the “potty sign” at 13 months. We transitioned to full-time pants by 16 months and ditched night-time nappies a month later. Throughout her first year of life, EC was the one thing I didn’t find overwhelming and I didn’t question myself over. It just felt right and I wanted the whole world to know - babies can use the potty from birth! We can use nappies but we can also offer the potty and there are so many benefits!

And that is how in mid-2019 I became an EC and Potty Learning Consultant.

But that is only the first part of the story.

While I was finding EC easy and fun, the lack of sleep was making me doubt every single thing. I questioned everything I was doing and everything my baby was doing. Was co-sleeping making her wake up more?

Was it that I wasn’t timing naps right? Wake windows?

Was I using the sling too little or too much?

Did I need to stop breastfeeding at night? Was there something wrong with her because she wasn’t sleeping longer or “better”?