Potty Training a 4-Month-Old Baby - Can it be Done?

Sameer's mom told me that in India babies are potty trained right from birth, so you can take them to a basin, say "ssss" and they'll go for you then. At the time, still recovering from giving birth and adjusting to taking care of a baby, I dismissed it as something that would never work here. The last thing I needed was one more thing to do! After all, I didn't want to spend my day cleaning up pee and poop that didn't make it to the basin... It's bad enough with the spit up :)

Then I came across some links by chance that talked about how some American women have adapted the concept for life here. But most importantly, I learned that it's natural for babies to go in a "potty place", like adults. They don't want to go in their own pants, that's something we condition them to do by putting them in diapers. Eventually they become desensitized to the urge to go, which makes potty training at 2 years of age more difficult.

A baby will send signals that he has to go. I guess some makes faces, others grunt. Rohan doesn't do anything except lie still when he has to pee, and I'm having to figure out his timing - within 10 minutes of waking up from a nap, 3-4 times in the first waking period of the morning, etc. (Apparently babies don't go in their sleep, they'll only do it when they wake briefly.) It's easy to figure out his bowel movements, because he puts in some effort, and it's usually while he's eating (breastmilk is a laxative). Sometimes the loud echo it makes in the potty startles him - that's so cute!

So, you must be wondering, once you know he has to go, how do you get him to the potty in time before he goes all over you? Well, he's never done that, and I figure it's because he's not a hose, he's a human. He needs to be comfortable to get the job done. So he's not going to do anything while I'm getting his bottoms off and taking him to his little Baby Bjorn potty, as long as I don't let him lie still. Then, the position he sits in seems to really help him let everything go! I think he much prefers it. The only shame is that I can't catch every one. I'm probably getting 1-4 pees a day and 1 bowel movement. At least I haven't had to clean up any messy blowouts since we started 2 weeks ago! I have enough laundry chores without scrubbing poo out of his onesies, too...

It seems that I may have started just in time - or too late, we'll see. Four months seems to be the usual cutoff time, when they've become conditioned to just let it all rip in their diaper and ignore that function. But he is responding better every day, so he may just end up mostly diaper free after a year! That's my hope anyway.