Diaper Free Baby, by Christine Gross-Loh, caught my attention in a bookstore sometime last year in Chattanooga. Do you know how much money we have spent on diapers over the last seven years with our five children? Not to mention the waste we've piled on our landfills! If there were a practical way to avoid diapers, I'd like to know! So I set about reading.
As a mom of six small children now, I certainly don't feel like I can devote my attention to baby Julia to notice when she has to eliminate. I was quite encouraged by the book's admonition that the goal of Elimination Communication is to maintain in your infant a distaste for sitting in soil, which can be accomplished in just a 4-hour diaper break each week. I can certainly let the baby sit on a waterproof pad for four hours a week. I can surely do that, I thought.
But I've done better than that! In a pleasant surprise, I've found I can tell when the baby needs to eliminate, and I can swoop her over to one of four tiny potties I have around the house. I hold her on my chest while holding the potty on my lap, and there she sits for 10 minutes or so while she goes. It's wonderful fun. As a bonus, I can tell she really hates sitting in her soiled diapers (which she has, because I just can't swoop her to a potty 20 times/day!), because she cries and cries and cries for a diaper change!
Saving money is great. Saving landfill is great. But what really motivated me to at least give it a try is the fact that my 3+ year old son trained for 12 months before he stopped fighting to have a diaper for elimination. He STILL hasn't "got it," but at least he's interested in wearing undies now. As he approached his third birthday, he was happy as a lark to sit in a dirty diaper for hours... or worse, in dirty britches!
Hopefully, with just a little attention to this matter each week, Julia will learn to use the potty quickly and efficiently on her own when the time comes to potty train her. Meanwhile, I'll be happy keeping a few diapers dry as the opportunity arises.
DiaperFreeBaby.org--making my life a happier place to live
I'm about the business of raising godly children. So far, God has blessed us with six of them! My husband owns his own business, and I'm fortunate enough to stay at home with the kiddos. If you're looking for deep philosophy on this blog, you're out of luck. If you'd prefer random tales of childhood tomfoolery, stick around!
1 comment:
I hope you'll keep us updated on how this is going. I read one of the major elimination training books before Marianne was born and it sounded like so much work! An encouraging report from a "real mom" makes me more likely to look into it again...
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