Okay, so Mustachians tend to not always do things the normal way, and this was definitely not the normal way. But we started putting our baby on the potty at about 4 months old, before she could even sit up without assistance. I had read some stuff about "elimination communication" and as crunchy as that sounds, the real, biggest issue for me was: poop.
I hate poop.
When baby was born, we had to call the nurse in to help with her first diaper change because it was a black tar poopsplosion that covered her entire lower half. There's no return policy for poop babies, though - apparently I was supposed to expect this level of grossness. And I couldn't even express my disgust, because then I would cause my baby irreparable mental harm from shaming her completely natural bodily functions. But her completely natural bodily functions were gross as fuck.
So I had read about this thing where you put your baby on the potty early on (like from birth, but I think it took me four months to remember any of the baby books I had read about during the happy glowing days of pregnancy) and then they get used to it instead of getting used to going in the diaper. Sometimes you can learn to "read" your baby's cues so you know if they're about to pee or poop and then you put them on the potty and it's this magical communion bond between parents and baby. The main thing for me was that it was going to help me not change poopy diapers. I mean, it was a crazy fucking thing to even try, right? But what if... what if it worked?
The crazy fucking thing worked. We'd put her on the potty after naps and when she woke up, and she started pooping more and more in the potty. I call it "potty training" because it was really just putting her on the potty at approximately the right time for pooping, there was no actual training involved. At 8 months or so we had the terrific idea that we should just put her on one of those toilet adaptor things on the regular toilet, and that was AMAZING because then we didn't even have to clean the poop out of the baby potty anymore - should have done that from the get go. Then we taught her the sign for potty and she actually uses it when she needs to poop!
She's almost 2 now and it's been months since we had an accident and had to change a poopy diaper. No poop! It's fucking awesome! She's completely used to the toilet and doesn't have any fear issues around it, since she's been going on it since she can remember. Also, MMM-related: much cheaper, since diapers don't need changing nearly as often if it's just pee.
Which, we haven't figured out any cues for how to tell she's going to pee yet. I think the diapers work too well to wick away moisture or something. We're going to do the naked thing this summer and see if it works. But then the problem is building a step ladder so she can actually get up to the big person toilet to go on her own, since we don't do the little potty thing. And another new problem is that she has figured out that if I'm busy with something when she wants to read a book, she can just pretend to need to potty and I'll drop whatever I'm doing and read her a book on the potty. Clever girl. Any help with these problems would be welcome!
But hey, no poop. It's amazing. So I thought I would share for new parents who hate poop as much as I do, or who want to do cloth diapers, since that is a lot less gross when you don't have to deal with washing poopy stuff. TL;DR: Early potty training: cuts down on diaper bills, cuts down on grossness. A++ would early potty train again.