u/Ill-Tangerine-5849

I'm seriously struggling, guys! I'm the type of person that always believes I can do what I set my mind to, and if something isn't working then I read books, listen to podcasts, practice over and over, and do whatever I need to to work through it! But, I feel like I've done EVERYTHING when it comes to EC, and I just cannot get it to work for us. It makes me so upset when I hear everyone's amazing EC stories because I'm so happy for you all, but just so upset for myself and my child that we don't have the same success. Part of me feels like I'm letting him down because it's not hygienic for him to always go in his diaper or training pants. But part of me also feels like, at this point, (even though I don't believe in "readiness"), I may need to follow his lead, and clearly pottying just is not something he wants right now.

For a bit of background, I started EC at 4 months and began with "lazy" EC, I would do the 4 easy catches and by around 6 months, things were going amazing for me! I wasn't really trying to catch pees at that point, but I hardly ever had any poop diapers, and I was so happy things were working so well! Then at around 9 months, things stopped working so well. I think what happened was I was off on his timing due to the "lazy" EC. Since then, I've taken breaks to re-group, done diaper free time and observation, and I think I have a much better grasp on when to offer, I feel more in tune with when he needs to go - but, it's still not really working for us.

Here are some examples of how things have been going this week:

He wakes up with a dry diaper in the morning, so I know he needs to go. He sits on the potty in the bathtub, while I also sit on the toilet and try to ignore him to give him some privacy (but if I get any further away than the toilet right next to him, he cries, so I can't give too much privacy). He's happy to sit for a while playing with toys, but doesn't pee and eventually stands back up. If I say "sit please" and gently guide him to sit, he is okay with sitting again and playing, but still doesn't pee and just stands up again eventually. So we play in the bathroom together for 15 mins until eventually he starts peeing on the floor. I tell him "potty" and sit him on the potty but he stops peeing right away. Another 15 minutes later, he starts peeing again and same thing. I know he still needs to go more (I'm familiar with the volume he usually releases when he's had a dry diaper overnight, and he hasn't gone enough), so I put him in a diaper and he fills it over the next 15 mins.

Later in the day, I feel that he needs to go based on his natural timing, plus he has a "peenie weenie" so it's pretty obvious he needs to go. When I take his training pants off, he's happy to sit on the potty, but he doesn't pee. I have things to do and can't just spend all day in the bathroom, so I put training pants back on - he pees 5 minutes later. I change him into dry training pants, but don't offer again since I figure he just went. He must not have gotten it all out, because he pees his pants again 15 mins later. I change him. About 15 minutes later, he starts acting like he needs to poop. I put him on the potty and he doesn't go, but I'm sure he needs to so I just go ahead and put him in a diaper. Sure enough, 10 minutes later I see him pooping in his diaper.

I mostly see people saying that if your baby isn't going when you put them on the potty, it's because they don't need to go and you aren't in tune with their timing and signals. But I really feel that I am in tune! Sure, I miss signals sometimes, but it seems like even when I notice a signal perfectly, I still can't get him to actually go on the potty. So - what do you guys think? Do I take a long break? Or is there something different I need to be trying?

CW: sleeping through the night

So, my 12 month old has started sleeping close to through the night sometimes. I didn’t do anything to “train” him to do this, he just started doing it. But the thing is, I’m not actually getting more sleep myself since he started doing this!

Up until recently our normal routine was I would nurse him to sleep on his floor bed around 8pm, then sneak away and do my own thing, and go to bed with my husband at 10pm with the baby monitor on. Then we’d normally hear him wake up on the monitor around midnight-1am and I’d go over and “breastsleep” with him for the rest of the night. This worked really well and I felt like I got good sleep. I liked being able to sleep in bed with my husband for a bit, and I was pretty much always able to go right back to sleep once I went over to the baby and slept pretty well while he nursed the rest of the night.

Lately, he has been oftentimes not waking until about 5am. At that point, he needs to nurse to sleep in until his normal wakeup of 6-6:30ish. But the problem is, when I woke up at 1am I was so sleepy I fell right back asleep. Now when I’m waking at 5am I find it so hard to go back to sleep and usually am not able to. So I’m actually kinda getting less sleep now!

What do you guys think I should do? The ideas I’ve considered are:

1. Start going to bed earlier and plan on waking at 5am every day and just watch TV with headphones while nursing and just enjoy the time. Doesn’t sound too bad, but I often like doing some of my hobbies during my “baby is asleep” time rather than just watching TV.

2. Somehow learn how to fall back asleep at 5am. I learned how to breastsleep and it was really hard initially but eventually my body figured it out, so maybe I can teach my body this?

3. Set an alarm for like 3am and just wake up and go breastsleep with my baby at that time even if he hasn’t woken up. Tbh, I’m kinda leaning towards this option, but it also feels weird like I should let my baby be independent if he’s seemingly wanting to sleep on his own?

I’m wondering what you guys have found to be the best backup for a 12 month old? I want to do the hybrid EC plan and fully ditch diapers once my little one is closer to 14/15 months and solidly walking (he’s pulling to stand but not walking at all yet). Until then, I’ve decided to move away from disposables because I want to teach him to feel the wetness and use 100% cotton cloth diapers. We just aren’t getting enough catches right now to go without a backup, except maybe brief times at home - it was frustrating me too much trying to do that and I was getting to “potty centered”, so that’s why I do feel like we need to use a backup right now.

However, I find it too difficult to do up a whole folded diaper with the snappi on him because he is very active and it’s hard to do that while he’s standing.

So what I’ve mostly been trying is a) training underwear with a reusable swim diaper (pull up style, so it’s easy to get on) on top, and b) stuffing a prefold folded in thirds into a swim diaper (this way is easier laundry-wise because I can reuse the swim diaper between pees and just change after poop, plus the prefold dries quicker than training underwear).

Have you guys had success with these options? Any other ideas I haven’t thought of?

I know we’re “supposed” to offer at getting into and out of car seat, high chair, baby carrier, before and after naps, etc, my problem is if I do all of those it’s just way too often. When I over offer, my 11 month old just gets so frustrated, so I feel like I really need to limit it more to just the times he actually needs to go. How are you guys balancing this? I know the ideal would be that I read his signals perfectly and just offer exactly when he really needs to do, and I’m trying but… idk I can’t always read him.

My 10 month old has been very into potty refusal lately and I’ve realized it’s because he wants to take the reins himself and have his own control over potty time (I think).

I had a breakthrough yesterday where I found if I sat on the floor and put him standing in between my legs, holding me for support, and then nurse him to help him feel calm - he would actually start scooting his legs until he got the potty between his legs and then sit down. We caught two pees so far this way!

It’s a great improvement from the screaming and arching his back that happened when I tried to put him on the potty myself, but it’s still kind of an annoying process. I’m wondering what things have others tried to help your child mount the potty on their own more smoothly?

I feel like there is probably an overlap between us who practice biologically normal infant sleep and those who practice EC, since I think it is also another biologically normal parenting practice. I have been getting more into EC lately, doing a lot of diaper free time with my 10 month old, and listening to Andrea Olson’s podcasts, since one of the most comprehensive resources.

I like her advice on EC, but sometimes she slides over into talking about sleep and about how much it helped her to sleep train her subsequent babies after her first and how she took away the “feed to sleep” association and stuff like that. Except she pretends it’s not sleep training, she says it’s “sleep learning” and that she is totally against cry it out and would never do anything like that. But she recommends The Baby Sleep Site by Nicole Johnson and says “just don’t do the CIO part”. But like - it’s just standard sleep training. Even the “non-CIO” is just different versions of Ferber, pick up put down, etc - all involve baby potentially crying and parent not responding.

I do get that it seems she had terrible PPD with her first and handling all night wakes by herself destroyed her first marriage (this is what she said) so I do understand the need to have more independent sleep for her future babies.

But I just don’t get how you can be such an advocate for biologically normal infant pottying, and then also talk about how they need to “learn to self soothe at night” or say that babies should be sleeping through the night by 6 months (yes some babies will do that naturally, but it’s also very biologically normal to still need to nurse at night past 6 months!)

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You guys helped me earlier to figure out the break release on my floor loom - thanks so much! Here is my first project I'm working on. Just making some washclothes. I wanted to play around with clasped weft with the idea of a "fire" theme.

I'm not sure I love how it looks, but it's interesting at least. Does anyone have any other ideas I could try weaving on this warp?

And any tips for getting better selvage? I normally lay the weft diagonally and then beat it so that the edges don't creep inward, but in this case with the clasped weft, I can't really do that. So I try to pull it tight but not too tight and end up with the edges creeping in and still some extra little bits on the selvage, oof.

Also, for this I just did a 2/2 twill so when I did the tie up, it was two tied on each treadle. Is it possible to do a different pattern that doesn't have two of each, like something where the two sides of the fabric would look different? I tried it just to see and it seems like it works but the shed is just smaller, but still workable - so maybe that's my answer right there?

I’m just wondering if what I’m doing with my baby could be harmful to him. So generally, at his bedtime I nurse him and it’s about a 30% chance he’ll nurse to sleep (he doesn’t have a huge nurse/sleep association- not sure why and I wish he did) so if he nurses to sleep, I’ll transfer him to his crib and if the transfer doesn’t work or he doesn’t nurse to sleep, then my husband takes over the rest of bedtime, because it was stressing me out being responsible for everything and I need a break. He is generally pretty good at getting our baby to sleep - he hums to him while rubbing his back in the crib and that usually works pretty well. But lately it hasn’t been going as well. Our baby has a big preference for me and a lot of separation anxiety, so when I leave, he just cries and cries with his dad. If he’s still crying after about 15 minutes, I come back and try to nurse again, and he’s more likely to nurse to sleep, but if he doesn’t sometimes it’s the same thing all over again, crying with dad until mom comes back in…

So I thought it’s okay because crying with a caregiver is different for the baby emotionally than crying without a caregiver, and he’s hopefully learning to get more used to being cared for by his dad. But now I’m getting worried because I don’t want him to cry so much and I really don’t want him to have bad feelings/association with going to bed?

Usually his first stretch of sleep is from around 8-midnight and whenever he wakes up, I bring him in bed with me and we breastsleep for the rest of the night and that works really well. He nurses often throughout the night but I hardly need to wake up for it, so I get good sleep. But I really like that little bit of time in his crib where I get to relax, be on my computer, get ready for bed by myself and stuff like that.

But should we change our routine somehow?

I have been doing lazy EC since my baby was about 2 months old. I offer about 3 times a day and up until recently I was catching most poops, which was great! For the past week and a half though, my baby hasn’t been going when I put him on the potty. Sometimes he will pee a little, but won’t poop anymore. I don’t think he’s constipated because he has been going in his diaper about once a day and the poops seem soft. Does anyone have any ideas how I can help him go. I’ve always held him over a toilet in classic EC hold. Would getting him his own potty help?

Hi, I'm trying to find a new endocrinologist. My current one is an NP and I just don't feel like she has a ton of experience with prolactinomas, especially with patients who desire to have kids and breastfeed.

I was diagnosed with my pituitary micro-adenoma before I got pregnant with my current baby (I believe it is what prevented me from getting pregnant until I got treatment). I was treated with cabergoline for a few months, my prolactin levels normalized, and I got pregnant. I stopped the cabergoline as soon as I tested positive. After giving birth, my milk did not come in very well. I went to a breastfeeding doctor who said she thought it was due to beginning my pregnancy on cabergoline with low prolactin. She prescribed me some herbal medicine and after a few weeks, I was finally able to get a full milk supply and exclusively breastfeed. I have been breastfeeding now for almost 9 months and I would like to continue until my baby is at least 18 months old. I'd also like to have another baby. My period hasn't come back yet, and I'm not sure if it will until I finish breastfeeding. I had another MRI a bit after I gave birth, and my adenoma had become a macro-adenoma, which my endo said was normal since it is expected to grow during pregnancy. It isn't touching my optic nerve or anything, fortunately.

My main questions that I'd really like answers to are: would I need to take significant time after weaning for treatment before getting pregnant again? Do I need to wean before starting cabergoline, or can I start it and continue to potentially dry nurse, if my baby wants to keep sucking, even if it stops my milk (and how fast will it stop my milk)? Would I likely have the same issue with initial low milk supply if I get pregnant and try to breastfeed again? Is there any chance I might not need treatment now, and might be able to just get pregnant again naturally, and possibly nurse through pregnancy and tandem nurse?