How to Save Money on Diapers Without Coupons

We started taking our daughter to the bathroom to get her used to the routine in Sept when she was 5 months old. We take her at least twice a day, once in the morning and once before bed. On weekends or days off of work, we take her during natural transition times (after eating, before and after naps, etc). We originally started this routine to save diapers and to make it apart of her day now so she wouldn't protest later when introducing actually toilet training in the future as some kids typically do.


I have calculated the data that we have recorded on her toileting progress. She is only 10 months old and here are the numbers:


Each month, we save an average of 50 diapers per month by taking her to the potty at least twice a day. (We did not calculate savings on wipes, but we use 1 to every 3 (at least) when she has a BM in the potty rather than in her diaper because it's messier when she goes in her diaper and takes more wipes for cleanup. We only take her throughout the day on weekends and twice a day on weekdays. I wish we were stay at home parents so we could see how many we would save then!


64% of the time when we take her to the bathroom, she successfully voids something in the potty! It is obvious she understands the concept and knows that to do when we put her there.


On Average, she stays dry for 3 consecutive hours before urinating at all in her diaper (because she pees in the potty in between). Sometimes, she wakes up from naps dry because she urinated in the potty right before the nap and right after the nap.


18% of the time, she not only successfully uses the bathroom, but she holds her urination until she goes onto the potty. She stays dry and waits until we bring her before she urinates! We re-use the diaper because it was never wet. When we started, like all babies, she was at 0% of holding it. She would successfully pee in the potty, but never held it and stayed dry in between visits to the bathroom. But now she is successfully urinating AND holding it 18% of the time that she's home with us!!!! And she is only 10 months old! I can not wait to see how well she does as her bladder grows and she gets older!


Please note, we monitor how much fluid and food intake she gets, and make sure she is voiding often in order to monitor dehydration!


Do with these facts what you will, but we have found it very interesting how quickly she is picking up on this routine and how much progress she has made for such a little person.

My Baby Girl

I am Very proud of my baby girl! on Super Bowl Sunday, we drove for the day to upstate NY to visit family. It was a 3.5 hour drive and she drank two 8 oz bottles in the car. I rushed her in the house trying to find a place to lie her down to change her, because her diapers usually fill up so quick!


She had a DRY diaper. I am talking completely dry! I just stood there in shock, and then took her to the bathroom to see if she would go in the toilet! She pooped and peed in the potty within seconds of sitting her down!


My 10 month old baby girl! I made all my siblings come and look because unless they see for themselves, no one believes me :)


So proud of my little girl!

Toilet Training our Infant

Our daughter is now 10 months old. Per advice from our pediatrician, we have been toileting our daughter since she was five months old. Well, sort of. She does not initiate, or hold it in between bathroom visits, or go at a set schedule. Our goal is not to toilet train her young. We just want two things: To get her familiar with this routine so when she’s ready to go independently, it won’t be so foreign to her—it’ll already be part of her day. We also started when my husband was looking for work and thought it would be a great way to save money on diapers (and it has been!).

Toilet training is one aspect of life that I know gives children difficulty, and I’ll do absolutely anything for her to avoid any potential difficulties in her life. As I have said in previous posts, as a behavior analyst I am always aware of habits that might shape into the kinds of problems that I am hired to resolve when a baby is older. Toilet training is a major issue that I have been called upon to help with. Kids are getting toilet trained older and older, and many of them are protesting when parents start trying to toilet train them. For years parents are happy for kids to go to the bathroom in diapers, and then all of a sudden at age two parents change the rules. I know if I was allowed to do something for two years and all of a sudden, it was inappropriate, I would be protesting the change too. Also, toileting is often not modeled for kids. They aren’t taken into the bathroom throughout those first two years and parents don’t typically use the bathroom with the door open so kids can see that it’s a typical part if their parent’s day. It is the only daily routine that I can think of that isn’t taught to them from the beginning. They take baths regularly, they finger feed themselves at the dinner table long before they can eat with a knife and fork, they watch mommy clean and grocery shop, etc. But they are oblivious from birth of using the bathroom and thrusted at age two into doing this foreign activity. I work with children with autism and know the power and importance of a routine. We wanted to get our daughter accustomed to the bathroom so when the time came, she would have no reason to protest or put up a fight about doing it. Why would she? She will already have practice doing it long before it’s an expectation on her. Just like any other part of her life, we start it now so she gets familiar with it.

The protocol is easy and very casual. We simply take her during normal transition times throughout the day as if she was a toddler. When she wakes up, before she gets in the car, when she gets home, after she eats, before a naps, etc. Like any good behavior analyst, I have a chart by her changing table to document and record when we take her, when we take her,when she is successful, when we change her diaper, etc. We let her sit on the potty with a toy and let her sit for a few minutes. We praise her when she goes but we don’t give her anything extra or special for going, it’s just part of her routine. When she’s done (whether she’s done going or sick of sitting there), she lifts her arms and we pick her up to put her on her changing table. It is a very casual and easy part of our routine. This will also make her getting older easier, because it’s already an established routine for us to follow.

This does not take any extra effort on our part so it is not very difficult for us to do. When we are away, we do not make it a point to take data, or take her to the bathroom, we let life happen as it does and are not consumed by this regimine. At the very least and when we can, we try to bring her once in the morning and once before bed when we’re home. Some days, that’s all we have time for. Other days and weekends, when we’re not travelling, we have time to take her after more activities in our house.

Today: There are days like today where she has stayed dry and been successful most of the day. To be exact, she successfully peed in the potty 7 times and had 3 BMs successfully in the potty today! Absolutely amazing that she’s getting the hang of it simply from us making it familiar to her! She only went through two diapers! (as opposed to at least 7 diapers at daycare because they obviously don’t take her to the bathroom at this age). Today she stayed dry for 2, 3, and 4 hours at a time because she was using the potty successfully in between. Her staying dry and her successful voids in the potty are all fantastic, but even if she did neither of those things, we are happy to keep taking her and have it a part of her day so it’s a natural routine in her life when the time comes for independence. We really just want the data to show that we’re taking her throughout her day. All the other data is just for fun, to see what she starts picking up on incidentally.

WARNINGS: 1) We give her constant supervision when she’s sitting on the toilet because she obviously is not strapped in, and safety is the utmost importance. We give her our undivided attention so she does not fall. 2) We also take data to make sure she is going to the bathroom enough, so we know she is hydrated. A dry diaper for extended periods of time is a sign of dehydration if the child is not going to the bathroom on the toilet. We make sure she is given enough fluids. Right now, she eats 30-40 oz of formula and 3-5 jars of stage 2 baby food a day. However, today she ate 24 oz of formula, 5 stage 2 foods, and a container of yogurt. She used the bathroom throughout the day even though she had dry diapers.

Please leave comments and questions so I can make these ideas as coherent as possible, so I can get them published in a parenting magazine or journal. I have been doing research on toileting. I have found toileting programs for children over 2, and intensive infant toileting programs where diapers are foregone and parents are constantly taking children to the bathroom, etc. I have not yet found any research on taking infants just to establish a routine without intensive strategies or the goal to make them independent. For me, this is just a proactive strategy to possibly avoid a protest when the real time comes. I do not want to push my child before she’s ready, I just want to make it like any other part of her routine. Just like the vacuum, I want to introduce it to her early so she knows what to expect and gets used to it so she’s not afraid. This is one aspect of life that I know gives children difficulty, and I’ll do anything now to avoid any potential difficulties for her later. (Not to mention we don't go through as many diapers as we might have, which is always a treat on the wallet! )

Thanks for reading. I will be posting the actual data and statistics soon so you know exactly how much money/diapers I have saved in the 5 months we have been doing this!

Shaping Behavior

I hide behind objects, I giggle hysterically for no apparent reason, I contort my face into shapes I never knew possible, I crawl around on the floor like a dog, I bang loudly on objects, I look in the mirror more often than I would like. In normal circumstances my actions would be labeled unusual, but you can just label me ‘mom.’ I will do just about anything to interact with my little daughter and she knows it! The best part about this blog is that not only can I talk about what I do to shape my daughter’s behavior, but I can talk about how she shapes mine! Behavior is a two way street and she knows exactly how to manipulate me to change my behavior. So, even when I’m exhausted or sick or when my back hurts, you won’t find me in bed if she gets her way. You will find me under the table, or in the dog’s kennel, or behind the couch. Reinforcement is the strengthening of behavior. Well, all she has to do is laugh and I’ll do it again and again. She has already figured out if mom does something funny and Jackie laughs, mommy will do it again. She has control over my behavior and I am perfectly okay with that.

I do not care for the taste of wagon wheels, freeze dried foods of any kind, or powdered baby formula. However, she gets me to happily eat them! She thinks it’s hilarious to hand me what she is eating and laugh when I take a bite. One gummy little smile and she gets me to do things no one else could get me to do. She’s a good little behavior analyst and she has found a powerful reinforcer- her smile!

Finger Feeding

Finger Feeding

Last week, Jackie was not finger feeding. She was about to turn 10 months so I wanted her to at least try. She would pick up a piece of food and clutch it in her fists. I was not allowed to help her move her arm close to her mouth, or open her hand. She is very strong and did not like the physical prompting. If her hand was empty and not hoarding food, I could move her arm and hand anywhere I wanted. She was just territorial over letting me help her when food was in her fist.

She already knew how to pick up the Cheerio, and she already had the precision and ability to pick it up in her littler fingers. She just wasn’t getting practice putting her hand to her mouth and she wasn’t letting me help her. Hello, Finger Feeding intervention!

One Day 1, I gave her Cheerios and she continued to clutch it in her hand. She did not understand the concept of putting her hand to her mouth. If I showed her a piece a food, she would open her mouth for me to feed her, but once it was in her hand she got lost. So, I decided to backtrack. I began feeding her again. I picked up the cheerio, she opened her mouth and I put it in her mouth for her. Why would I do that? How could she ever learn if she is relying on me to feed her? Well, I will tell you. The trick was to teach her to put her hand to her mouth. I wanted her to get the muscle memory so she would have the practice with the motions. Day One, after seeing she made no progress of putting hand to mouth, I started feeding her. I put the item in her mouth, and then put her hand to her lips. I repeated this. I put the item in mouth, while I put her hand to lips. I did this so she would pair getting yummy food in her mouth with putting her hand to her lips. Day Two, I did the same thing. In the middle of her feeding, I started putting the food halfway in her mouth and prompting her hand to put the food in her mouth the rest of the way. She was getting so much practice putting her hand to her mouth! Day 3 I mixed it up: I gave her some food by mouth and let her practice the motions. Then, I would give her one Cheerio for her to pick up on her own. She picked it up and...put her hand to her mouth! Sometimes the food would be on the very outside of her grip, so it was easy for the food to drop from her hands and into her mouth. However, she didn’t know how to loosen her grip, so the food went into her fist and up to her mouth, but she wasn’t loosening her grip to eat it. This was very frustrating for her. Sometimes when she lifted her hand and tried to eat it, I would put one in her mouth at the same time so she was getting rewarded for picking it up and bring it to her mouth. I also went back to feeding her halfway and letting her push the food in her mouth the rest of the way, to keep her frustration low and to let her keep getting practice with the motions of self-feeding. On Day Four, I gave her Wagon Wheels to bring to daycare (very large hand- held food that dissolves in mouth, so she could see what she was bringing to her mouth). She was very successful at eating the larger food. The larger food gave her practice bringing her food to her mouth and she could see it in her hand. Eating was much more successful that way. When she got home on Day 4, I gave her a wagon wheel while I prepared her dinner. After spoon feeding her, I gave her tiny cheerios to practice finger feeding small foods and she did it!!! She picked it up, put it to her mouth, opened her hand to see where it was in her little fist, and put the food in her mouth!!! She is now a pro at finger feeding. She sometimes gets frustrated if she drops one, but I am next to her to put another one on her plate to distract her from her mistake. One more step to making my little one independent. And it took only Four days!

Irrational Fear for Infant

Funny Story About a Little Girl and a Fear of Vacuums

Before Christmas I had relatives visit and decided to vacuum while my 8 month old daughter was in her high chair. Usually, I vacuum while she is sleeping or out of the house, but had waited until the last minute and needed to do it in front of her. Big mistake! I have never seen her afraid before! She got all red, cried tears, and was literally shaking. I felt like a terrible mother! I ran to her, picked her up, and hid the vacuum. She was just so afraid of the loud noise, the large equipment, etc.

If I had thought it through, I would have introduced it to her sooner so it would have been part of her daily life and she would have been used to it already. But, live and learn.

A few days later, I went to daycare and they dragged the vacuum across the floor so they could plug it in. She panicked again! She was shaking and screaming and scared to death. Well, this was alarming to me. Not only was it frightening for her the first time when it was on, but I had scarred her to the point where she saw one about to be plugged in and was still scared. So, the behavior analyst in me wanted to end this irrational fear. Seeing a vacuum cleaner does not need to elicit such panic in an infant. I went home and started vacuum desensitization training! The vacuum became part of the family from then on. The vacuum came out from hiding in the closet, and stayed out in the living room. She ate with it near her, played with it near her, we rolled her dolls around on it like a ride, and it even opened presents with us at the Christmas tree.

At first, she freaked out. But, the more she saw it as an inanimate object in the room and not as a terrorizing machine, she was fine. It only took a day before she was approaching it herself to investigate it further. Daycare reports that they not only have the vacuum off in front of her, but turn it on to clean as well and she no longer cries or needs to be held, etc. She does still have a fight or flight kind of look on her face, as if she's trying to determine if it's a danger to her, but she is no longer terrified. I just made her realize it is as innocuous as a pillow on the couch or one of her toys, and she is adjusting well.

So, a lesson learned and a crisis averted for now. Plus, the vacuum joining us for gift opening by the Christmas tree was priceless.

Sleeping Through The Night

Our daughter sleeps through the night and she has been since she was 6 weeks old (she was sleeping 5 consecutive hours a night at 2 weeks). I credit it to advice from our pediatrician: to NEVER let our daughter fall asleep in our arms. Our pediatrician explained that babies need to learn to fall asleep on their back in order to sleep through the night. Babies wake up in the middle of the night naturally, and need to be familiar with being on their back so they can drift right back to sleep. If a baby is accustomed to falling asleep in a person's arms, when they wake up in the middle of the night in their crib on their back they will not know what to do. They will need to be held to drift off asleep again because that's how they learned to sleep.

Behaviorally, this made perfect sense, so we took what she the doctor to heart. We just wanted to give our daughter independence as a baby so her bedtime routine wouldn't be a problem for her (or us) in the future. Every night, we put her to bed on her back while she was sleepy, and let her put herself to sleep. That way, if she wakes up in the middle of the night, she is on her back and it is familiar to her so she knows what to do to drift off again. We never let her learn to be dependent on us for bedtime. Boy does it work! Everyone compliments us on how well she sleeps, and I truly feel this is the major factor in her success. It is so wonderful as a mom to be able to put the baby down to bed and not have to rock or hold her for an hour, etc. I am especially glad I do not have to have that feeling of quiet caution after letting a baby fall asleep on my shoulder and trying to put her in the crib without her waking up. Giving her independent sleep habits young makes my life so much easier.

When and if I am blessed with another child, I will follow this strategy again and make her as independent as possible early on, so she sleeps through the night without needing us to rock her back to sleep.

Colleen W