Friday, January 2, 2009

Elimination Communication Day 3: An Experimental Trial Continued

As we were continuing our observation sessions for elimination communication, I was beginning to feel discouraged. After hours of watching my son's every twitch, logging the times of every nap, feeding, and elimination, I could find no pattern and could see no cues. I was beginning to think that maybe it wouldn't work out for us. I wanted to try a few more days of observing before throwing in the towel.

One of the problems we've had is, Jonah does not seem to urinate when he is not wearing a diaper. He lay hours on the floor playing, completely naked for me to see that much anticipated golden stream. He would begin to get cold or fussy, or I would need to get back to the reality of stay-at-home-mom chores. The diapers he wore while I carried him in my sling were coverless, but there would still be a slight delay between when he urinated and when I would know that it was happening. It was too difficult for me to see his cues this way.

This afternoon, during our fourth observation session, we had a breakthrough. Jonah urinated onto the pile of cloth diapers on which he was playing. When I saw him urinating, I smiled and made the "sssss" sound. Jonah smiled at me and went on playing. A few moments later, it happened again. I met it with the same reaction and so did Jonah. An hour later, Jonah had urinated four times and each time I smiled and whispered the "ssss" sound into his ear. By the fifth time that he urinated, I was able to successfully predict it and have the extra diaper ready for clean up duty. I was completely overjoyed, and have newfound hope in that we can pull this off.

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