Dressing for EC - Peter in a long sleeve shirt and long socks
Ins and outs
Since the previous month, I had been suspicious about some changes in Peter’s stools (but had been told not to worry, and that it was just because of excess saliva from teething). When he got worse the only change I could think of was that he was often nursing in shorter bursts. When he nursed only a couple minutes I thought he was finished and switched him to the other side the next time.
I’ve since realized that he was just distracted as he became more aware of the world. Switching sides more frequently meant he was getting less fat than when he would nurse on one side for a long time (as the baby nurses the fat content of the milk gradually increases). The problem was worsened since I seemed to have an oversupply. We followed some of the advice on kellymom.com’s page about oversupply and he improved immediately.
Unfortunately the gut issues returned within a couple of weeks. For example, Peter started giving his cues that he needed to poop but then wouldn’t be able to go. He would fuss and want to nurse and sometimes it would be a really long time. I wonder if I wasn’t using EC if I would have known the reason he was upset? Since I noticed that he didn’t have problems over night or in the morning, I figured it must be something in my diet bothering him. I made some changes (a whole separate story) and his symptoms went away again. I was surprised to realize that Peter also had less urgency with urination after my dietary changes.
Dressing for EC
During this month Peter outgrew all the t-shirts we got him (they were great in the summer over a prefold and diaper belt). I pulled out the boxes of 12 month clothes that we had received and realized almost everything was the bodysuit or “onesie” style. I had had a hard time with onesies when we started using the potty (the back of the shirt easily slipped into the potty and then got wet). Now that we are using a diaper belt, the prefold hangs well over the back of the potty and keeps the shirt from falling in. Some days are starting to get cooler, but he is still warm enough in long sleeve body suits over Old Navy’s triple roll socks, pulled all the way up.
We’ve used baby leg warmers with all of our kids. Thankfully, I’ve been able to make them easily from women’s knee high socks. If you’re interested, I’m sure you can find tutorials online. We even found some boyish knee high socks so Jonathan didn’t have to wear purple or pink
We’ve been doing EC since ours was 6 months and while it was a lot easier to catch the obvious cues (he grunted pretty clearly because as he started solid food, they were not so goopy anymore) we had enough time to put him on the pot. Now, his eating schedule has changed (he’s a grazer) and we’ll be lucky if we catch him (he’ll be done by the time we get him on the pot), so we’ll just have to put in more effort and put him on at regular intervals. Glad you solved the dietary issue, that can be frustrating and tricky!