Bribery---Er, Postive Reinforcement

There may come a time during your potty training adventure where your child begins to miss for no apparent reason. Usually you'll figure out what the reason is; normally it's either teething or hitting a developmental milestone. But occasionally you might not figure it out, and you may be tempted to do what we did, and that was bribe our child. Our firstborn had started having some poop accidents

Progress

When you are trying to decide whether or not to potty train your baby, you might wonder how quickly your baby will progress. You might wonder if it's worth it. Now, I can sit here and tell you that every baby is different, that every parent is different, that it depends on the temperament, etc. I know that you'd rather hear what results we've had, and how quickly we've had them. So while those

Product Review: bumGenius 3.0 One Size Diapers

The world of cloth diapering can be highly confusing. There are so many choices: all-in-ones, pockets, fitteds, flats, pre-folds, covers, pins, snappis, organic cotton, the list goes on and on. With our first baby, we bought some flat diapers, a few dritz pins, and some snappis. We didn't cloth diaper him much at all, which I regret now. Part of it was feeling overwhelmed by having a newborn for

Let Your Hands Do The Talking

One of the best communication tools to have in your arsenal as an IPT parent is sign language. We used Joseph Garcia's kit, pictured here:One awesome thing about infants is that they can sign much earlier than they can talk. How much earlier? While the kit says infants around 7-9 months will sign, we've experienced it much earlier with our kids. Our son started "mabbling" (manual babbling) around

Product Review: Sweet Doll Baby AIO

Given that with IPT you'll have very few big misses, when choosing a cloth diaper, I'm more worried about comfort and durability than I am about "leakproofness" or keeping the baby feeling dry. In fact, I prefer it if the baby does feel the wetness, as discussed in my post about awareness.I ordered my two Sweet Doll Baby AIOs from Ebay. I got factory seconds because I am a cheapskate. The

A Word About Awareness

With our second baby, we've decided to go with cloth diapers to help with awareness. In other words, we want her to know when she's peed her diaper. We want her to feel the cause and effect relationship. That's the bad thing about disposables these days: they're so incredibly absorbent, a baby doesn't really feel the consequence of going in her diaper. To take it one step further, many times a

Speaking The Lingo

When you enter the world of Infant Potty Training, there are many terms you'll want to become familiar with if you cruise other sites and forums. With that in mind, I've come up with a list that will help you understand what they're talking about.Infant Potty Training-The process of teaching your young infant to use the potty, instead of using their diaper as a potty. This is the terminology I

The Scoop On Poop

One thing about IPT is you will become very familiar with your baby's poop. This is good because it can give you a heads up about changes your baby is experiencing. You'll become well acquainted with how often your baby poops and the consistency thereof, which sounds gross, but it's a good thing to be up on. It can help you know if a certain food you've introduced causes a digestive reaction.

Infant Potty Training...At night???

Should you try to practice infant potty training at night? Our first baby was very "high need." In the first few months of his life, we had lots of trouble getting him to go to sleep at night. We had decided right off the bat to put him in a diaper and try to get as much sleep as we could. Until he was three months old or so, he was extremely fussy at night. In hindsight, I wonder if maybe he

Can You Start With An Older Baby?

In case you were wondering, it doesn't matter how old your baby is: you can still start IPT (or EC if you prefer the term) any time you want. The principles still apply. Start watching her cues, though you probably have already noticed a pattern of when they go. A great way to start would be after naps and first thing in the morning. Go off of timing while you're learning your baby's cues.It

Commitment

You might be wondering if this consumes every waking moment of a mom's life. The answer in short is, no. It does take some time and commitment, but I look at it as an investment. You put in a good bit of effort up front, but as your baby grows, they become more independent, and it saves you time. The way I look at it is, whether you do IPT or not, you are training your baby. If you do IPT, you're