I can’t remember if I’ve posted this yet, but as of a few months ago Meredith is mostly potty trained. At home, she’s pretty much 100%. We’ve even been leaving her diaperless most nights. While out and about, it seems to depend on a lot of factors about whether she will have accidents or not. If she’s playing at a park, I have to try and catch her in a lull in play and ask if she needs to go. I think otherwise she just gets too busy to be bothered. If we’re out shopping or walking she will usually tell me when she needs to go. So we pretty much leave her in training pants all the time now and just bring extra pants along just in case.
The other day, a friend of mine asked if we were going to do EC the same way with this baby, or if we planned to do a more “hardcore” version of it next time. The question made me stop and think. I joke that we do a lazy version of EC, but I think that’s because the criticisms we hear about EC are how much work it is and we never found it to be much more work than changing a diaper (and often found it to be less work), so therefore it must be a lazy version, right? We never recorded the exact times she peed vs when she ate or kept a notebook of her potty habits like I’ve read others do, but we did have a mental list of times she was likely to go: as a baby, something like shortly after nursing or waking up, every half hour or so in the morning, every hour or so in the afternoon, etc. So we would keep semi-track of the time and if we noticed it had been a while since we had last brought her, we would offer the potty. I wouldn’t set a timer and rush her to the potty when it went off; if I was reading an e-mail or a book, I’d take the couple of minutes to finish first. If she was signaling that she needed to go I’d take her sooner (though she rarely signaled, even while naked and with us watching, there were very few times we noticed any kind of change in her behaviour until she was older). Up until she started solids at 10 1/2 or 11 months, every poop ended up in the potty for a long time. Way easier than changing a poopy diaper!
That summer we left her naked most of the time and we seemed to be able to catch most pees. She was signaling more and things were going well. I thought she might be out of diapers completely around her first birthday. In the fall though, she had a bit of a potty strike. Not sure if it was because she had to be dressed more, or coincidence, but she didn’t like to sit on the potty and even when I got creative about where to take her often she would arch her back or refuse to go. She never completely refused to go, so we still got some “catches” every day. Around 17 or 18 months though she really started using the potty and signaling a lot more. We followed her lead a lot. When she was amenable to it, we would offer the potty anytime we noticed she hadn’t pee in a while. Sometimes she would seem to be getting a bit frustrated or she would actually hold the pee until we’d put a diaper back on her and then pee in the diaper, or on the (laminate) floor if she didn’t have a diaper on. We did talk to her at times about pee going in the potty or toilet, and we’d point out that we had to clean it up if she peed on the floor, but we tried not to make a big deal out of it or make it out to be “bad” or “good” either way. It would just be a “Oops, you peed on the floor. Let’s clean it up. If you let me know when you need to pee I can take you to the toilet.” (And unlike criticisms of EC I’ve read, we’ve never had constant puddles to clean up or anything like that lol.)
Then one day around mid-June, she just started using the potty, every single time. She uses it independently and doesn’t need help until she’s done. We never spent any time actually potty training her, it was pretty effortless. But she’s never lost that bodily awareness or the ability to hold it. (Even as a baby I’ve seen signs that she could hold her pee quite a bit longer than most people think.) She was older than a lot of EC’d kids I know, around 22 months, but we never did EC just for early potty training. There were so many other reasons: communication, so that she wouldn’t lose the body awareness, for environmental reasons, so that I’d have less diapers to clean… Even during times when she was going through potty strikes, the most diapers I had was 11 and I only did laundry every other day.
So I guess the short answer to the question, is probably not. I can’t really think of anything that I’d change if I were to do it over. Possibly leaving her naked more in the fall last year and using baby legs, but that’s about the only thing I can think of. We will likely do everything the same with the next baby, with the most important part being following the baby’s lead. We will plan to use timing and intuition mostly, but if the baby is a signaler then that would make things a little easier. We’ll offer the potty more at times when we know he or she tends to go more, and less at other times. If the baby goes through periods where he or she isn’t at all interested in the potty or doesn’t like to be offered, we’ll back off for a while and wait until she’s showing more interest again. I’ll start out offering at night when he or she wakes up, but again, if she starts really hating pottying at night then we’ll drop it for a while. Meredith has been dry at night the majority of the time since around 23 months, and that’s with very little nighttime EC in the last year or so.
I think things will go differently though, simply because we know more and we’re more aware ourselves. There were times when Meredith was fussy as a baby that we would nurse her or hold her or rock her, and then she’d have a big pee or poo and we would think “oh, of course!”. But as first time parents growing up in a society where we’re made to think babies aren’t aware of their own elimination needs, it was hard to get into the mindset where crying might mean the need to be pottied. I do wonder sometimes if the reason she fussed at time when needing to go when she was just a tiny baby but not so much (or at all) later, is because we missed enough signals that she just stopped bothering. I’ve heard a few parents say their second kid signaled more, but I wonder if that’s really true or if it’s just that once you have experience and have gotten into the mindset that a tiny baby might signal, you notice it more? Without going back in time, it’s impossible to say, but I am looking forward to doing it all over again one more time. 
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I have found with Sam at night sometimes she wakes up and gets really upset and isn’t aware that she nees to go right away. And of Course during the day she doesn’t think that she should have to go everyday, which causes some issues, but she has really good bladder control!
And Anthony is interested in the potty probably 2 years earlier than Sam. He had his potty strike at 10 months, it was a complete one and lasted a long time, but now he knows what to do. I have had a number of comments about how early it is for a boy. I think it is partly from Sam potty training though, he started to get interested again when she started to use the potty. He only uses the potty when he feels like it though, although a couple of days he tried hard to get to the bathroom (upstairs) to poop by himself. He didn’t make it, but he tried.
I would be so happy if he would just go for the potty full time, because he likes his pee way to much and I usually have to fight with him to get an old very wet (sometimes poopy) diaper off.
I think the same about Meredith, that sometimes she wakes up and doesn’t realize that she woke up because she needs to pee so she wants to nurse and have some water first before she wants to pee.
I’ve heard younger siblings often train earlier simply from watching the older siblings do it. I’m hoping the next baby is out of diapers even sooner than Meredith, though before two is certainly nothing to complain about.
I’m glad Meredith generally doesn’t like to be in poopy or wet diapers, though sometimes if she’s playing at the park or really distracted she won’t want a wet one changed.
Ant now uses the potty all the time when he has a bare bum (which is most of the time when at home), but doesn’t even try to go if he has something on, diapers or training pants.