Elimination communication is working for us, though we have not fully committed to it yet. Even though E and I spend all our days together, I have yet to really note any signs from him for needing to go to the bathroom. I can tell when he wants to eat and when he needs to sleep, but not when he is ready to eliminate. It is ok though, we have maintained E's awareness so he does pee when we cue him into his little Baby Bjorn toilet. I think that E just doesn't really care about going to the bathroom yet. He never seems uncomfortable, even in the wettest diaper, and most of the time when he poops there is no noticeable sign, not even a smell sometimes. From my readings about EC the poops are supposed to be the easiest to determine, but we catch many more pees than poops right now.
E is fully breastfed so his poop is pretty liquid, it is only just starting to get a bit more sticky in the past two-ish weeks. So, as his digestive system matures and he starts to eat solid food in a few months, we will see if it is easier to catch poops and to teach E a separate cue for them. Right now he only has one cue to respond to and he does it very well. We taught E the pee cue by responding with it in the first few weeks of life if he ever peed outside of his diaper. It was a challenge at first to not make some noise of surprise or flip out if he started peeing all over the place. But Marc and I both trained ourselves to just stand there and make the cueing noise while he peed, then clean up afterwards.
Initially E wasn't a fan of being held over the little toilet, but he adjusted quickly. Even now he will get upset if he is tired and he won't want to sit or be held over the toilet, but that is ok. We try very hard not to stress over whether he eliminates in the toilet or not because if we stress, he will stress and then he won't eliminate on cue. I have spent time with E out of his diaper, usually about a half an hour a day (our record so far is two hours). The problem with diaper-free time is that I worry about E peeing on me, or falling asleep without a diaper on so I am holding him over the toilet about every ten minutes and it isn't fun for either of us. Until I can feel more comfortable and relax more when E has his diaper off, I will not go for long times. I am hoping as he gets older I will start to recognize signs that he needs to use the toilet, or he will learn the ASL sign to tell me he needs to go. We are working on it. I think once E can sit up on his own I will be more vigorous about elimination communication. At this point I feel keeping him aware of how to release his pelvic floor is good enough.
