Diaper Free Baby – Elimination Communication – Let's GetOur Priorities Straight
"Peeing the baby?"
Beckie, before coming into the house had said she just had to "pee the baby", which apparently meant holding little Malia by the thighs, face forward, legs apart, leaning back on mom's chest so she could pee in our yard.
Rivka was still pregnant with Rinah and we thought this was pretty damn cool. So Beckie introduced us to Elimination Communication, in which you let the baby know that they can communicate with you about bladder and bowel activity.
A lot of it is simply about timing. Around 30 minutes after eating, provide an opportunity to go pee or poop. Just like a puppy. Then while they are doing it, you make a sound for pee (like psssss) and a sound for poop (maybe like a grunting sound). Then you can use those sounds to encourage and inquire.
We got one of these crazy potty's that you hold between your thighs:
And I actually caught Ashirah's meconium in it. Meconium is the first stuff that comes out of the baby's bowels and it's black and sticky like tar. Maybe it was Rinah's meconium that we caught. For one of the baby's it definitely ended up on my chest when we were napping together. Fortunately we're nude a lot around here.
Nakedness helps a lot with the Diaper-Free approach, as does non-carpeted floors. Because then the toddler can just be naked and it's easy to jump on the potty when they feel like it or you think it's probably time. We got one of these awesome BabyBjörn jammies.
As far as when they are still infants, we found that the little blue potty-hat pictured above didn't get a lot of use, first of all because you can just use a tupperware container of the right size, and second because you can hold them over the earth (gardens like pee), toilet or even sink.
A Book
A couple of things we learned from the Diaper Free Baby book are:
- That this is the way most of the world toilet-trains infants
- That diaper companies lobbied in the 1960's to have the toilet training age increased
- That babies have to be trained to pee and poop in their diapers and are disinclined to
We highly recommend this approach. Both Rinah and Ashirah were well done with diapers in their second year.
Here's a source from which we got stuff:
For diapers I think we used Bum Genius. Make sure you close the velcro before washing and drying.
Thanks to @xtrodinarypilot for inviting me to share this.
Comments welcome. Follow me for more bits of esoteric experience.
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I've just joined steemit and wanted to write my first post about EC..what a coincidence. I will still write it and have found some interesting data regarding how the nappy industry is trying to sell nappies to the Chinese by promising them 30min more sleep. Watch this space..
We've got two boys, the older one was dry at 14 months and the younger is almost 1 and practicing hard.
English below
L'HNI est une approche fantastique autant pour les enfants que pour les parents. Nous avons pratiqué l'hygiène naturelle infantile avec notre 3e enfant et ce fut une expérience extraordinaire! Les sourires de reconnaissance que nous avons reçu de notre enfant lorsque nous comprenions son besoin d'éliminer un pipi ou un caca étaient des récompenses merveilleuses! La nudité est en effet d'une grande aide pour pratiquer l'HNI. Bébé et maman étaient le plus souvent nus avec seulement une écharpe de portage et donc les dégats étaient facilement nettoyés. De plus, lorsque bébé dormait, c'était sur des couvertures posées sur le sol et donc facile à nettoyer en cas de dégats. Notre enfant a été propre vers 14 mois. Vraiment une belle expérience!!!! Merci pour ce partage. C'est message à diffuser afin de connaitre cette approche.
EC is a fantastic approach for both children and parents.We practiced elimination communication with our 3rd child and it was an amazing experience! The grateful smiles we received from our child when we understood his need to eliminate a pee or a poop were wonderful rewards! Nudity is indeed a great help to practice the EC. Baby and Mom were most often naked with only a portage scarf and therefore the damage was easily cleaned. In addition, when the baby slept, it was on blankets placed on the floor and therefore easy to clean in case of damage. Our child was clean around 14 months. Really a great experience !!!! Thanks for sharing. It is a message to be disseminated in order for more parents to know about this approach.
This is really awesome. That makes sense. We used cloth diapers for all the kids. This time we are actually using bum genius, ragababe, and happy flutes. My wife and i decided to discuss elimination communication and I wil let you know how it goes.
Yes. Please do. I'm sure you're gonna love it. "Caught a poop!" It's a good feeling.
Upvoting because I love to see conversation about parenting issues on Steemit. We used cloth - I had neither the mental energy or information to use EC, but my munchikins switched to panties before the age of two. Thanks!
Thanks for the upvote. What was really funny–and I think this happens with most children at some point–is like six months into being in panties, Rinah decided stopping whatever she was doing to think about peeing was a really small-minded approach to life. So there was a period of a lot of panties in with the dirty rag and towel laundry there for a minute.