I know I've brought it up before, but I don't know how much I've really talked about it. For some unknown reason, even to myself, I decided to do things a little differently this time around. Making my own baby food, cloth diapering. That's right, cloth diapers. If anybody had told me five years ago that I'd be using cloth diapers I would have told them they were crazy. Cloth diapers are for crazy people. Why would you want to put yourself through that? No way.
Yeah, so. I'm not really sure why I decided to cloth diaper Amanda. Charlie thought I was crazy, and so did several of my friends. They probably still do. I have two friends who did it quite successfully and it intrigued me. Actually, it wasn't the cloth diapering that interested me as much as the Elimination Communication (EC). EC is also known to the novice as infant potty training, but the hard core EC people get pretty cranky when you call it that. Because, truly, you can't potty train an infant. In a nutshell, babies give signs or signals when they have to go the the bathroom, so you learn to read those signs and take them to the bathroom so they don't have to go in their diaper. So really, it's training the parents, not the babies. Eastern civilization does this all the time. Do you think those ladies out in the fields just let their babies pee and poop on them? I don't think so. They figure out what their babies do right before they go to the bathroom and when they start to do it they take them out of their carrier and let them go. Simple as that.
Well, it's not that simple, but it can be. As I was saying, I have a couple of friends who have done it with a lot of success and for some reason was moved to try it myself. Maybe because it was super cool, but more likely because I was having major issues getting Sarah potty trained and both of their children, a boy for one and a girl for the other so really it works regardless of gender, were pretty much potty trained by age two. I would do anything to not have to repeat what I was going through with Sarah and make it more relaxed and stress free. If EC would get baby number three potty trained earlier than my other two than I was all for it.
I won't go into the whole drawn out story, but basically I slowly got into cloth diapers and EC. At this point I cloth diaper about 99% of the time. The only time I don't is if I'm in a pinch and I don't have any clean cloth diapers, which doesn't happen very often, or we're traveling. It's way too hard to use cloth when you are going on a trip for several reasons. I'm not as consistent with the EC. I probably do it about 10% of the time. Maybe. I should do it every time I change her diaper, but I don't. It's not that I can't, I'm just lazy. It's much easier to just take off the current diaper and put on a new one, as opposed to making a pit stop in the bathroom to see if she will pee. I did it more consistently when she was younger, however, so she still knows how to do it when I ask. That doesn't mean she always does, because she may not need to go, but if she does need to go and I ask she will. It's pretty cool if you think about it.
So, on with my story. Today I took Amanda to the doctor for what I thought was a urinary tract infection (UTI). The last couple of days she has been getting up in the morning and her diaper has had the most pungent, overpowering ammonia smell that you could ever smell. It is like nothing I have ever smelled before. Of course I got on the internet to see what it could be, and it said when baby pee smells like ammonia that it could be a UTI or a kidney infection. I called the nurse just to make sure I should bring her in and of course she recommended we come in today.
Now, we have been to the doctor so much lately that the nurse who takes you back to the exam rooms knows all my kids by name. Do you know how many kids she sees each day? Tons. She knows their names, knows where we go on vacation, knows way too much information about them because WE ARE ALWAYS THERE. Plus, since I have no one else to leave them with, whenever we go to the doctor I usually have all three kids with me, regardless of how many of them are actually sick.
It's not just that nurse, it's several people in that office. So at this point I really don't like to bring them in unless I am positive there is something wrong with them. I would hate for them to think I'm a hypochondriac. Anyway, when we saw the nurse practitioner she said it very well could be a UTI, but the only way to know for sure was to hook Amanda up to a catheter to get a urine sample. What a sad, sad thought.
At that point I asked her if she had ever heard of EC. She hadn't, which kind of surprised me, but no worries. I told her we sort of did it and I would try to get her to pee but had no idea if I could actually do it. I didn't think she would, but thought it would be worth a try because we really needed the urine sample and if I couldn't get her to do it there I was going to have to take the cup home. So, into the bathroom we went. Sarah was really trying to understand why Amanda had to pee in a cup and I tried my best to explain it to her. I asked Amanda to pee and nothing. We weren't in our bathroom, Sarah was jumping all over the place and I thought there is no way and then all of a sudden she did it. It wasn't a ton, but more than enough for the sample.
The nurse practitioner was so impressed. More like blown away. She couldn't believe I had just gotten a 10-month-old to pee in a cup. I was pretty impressed too. I didn't really think she'd do it, but was so glad that she did. Turns out she did not have anything wrong other than she was a tiny bit dehydrated. It's hotter than hot here and since she's been eating more table food she's not nursing or drinking as much. All I need to do is nurse a few extra times a day and give her more water.
Even though I'm far from mastering EC and I still change a lot of wet and dirty diapers, I am so glad that I was willing to try and by doing something different I was able to save my daughter a lot of discomfort for something so small. Also, we may be better off on the potty training track than I thought.
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