Synopsis:

A documentary by Kenton Hoppas about families that use Elimination Communication with their infant children and the positive aspects in brings to their family as well as the inevitable difficulties of going “diaper-free” with an infant.

It is 19 minutes long.

Watch the video…

Practicing Elimination Communication (EC) Is All About REDUCING The Ecological Impact Of Your Baby.

Generally babies produce about two tonnes of diaper waste that pollutes our planet for many years. With some fun potty breaks in your day you can gradually reduce that amount…

Read on to discover three ways practicing Baby Pottying will help ease the environmental impact of your tiny baby…

There are many benefits to being part-time diaper free. However the main reason parents love to practice EC is the enhanced connection between them and their babies. Simply, their babies love it and they love it too.

- Perhaps your baby will love it as well?

3 Benefits of Practicing Elimination Communication That Are Helpful To Our Environment:

1. ANY reduction in the number of disposable diapers used is a boon to the environment – imagine if every parent used one less diaper per day as their baby went in the potty a few times?

2. ANY drop in the size of your diaper washing load is fantastic news for mother Earth – even less water and detergents used.

3. ANY reduction in the amount of creams, wipes, powders and medicated diaper rash ointments lessens the ecological impact we have on the environment. All these products mean more resources, transport, waste. We can reduce it.

Strive to use just one less diaper each day – or each week at first!

Even one less diaper will make a difference to the Earth as more families do it. Visit Part Time Diaper Free to discover your many options to slowly reduce your need for diapers, as you raise a green baby.

You’ll feel great and it will set a wonderful example to your friends and family. Your child will grow up with a legacy of less waste and knowledge of a more sustainable and traditional way to care for babies as they develop social toilet use skills in a natural, gradual way.

Charndra.

Pop over to Charndra’s website on part time Baby Pottying, eitherwww.PartTimeDiaperFree.com or www.PartTimeNappyFree.com.au – you can join to receive a free e-course introducing you to the Secrets of EC Confidence. Over 40 Potty Songs, plenty of tips, resources and helpful ideas to make your journey easing into EC very smooth indeed.

Give EC a go! It’s good for the Earth.

I was visiting the blog of Lisa called “Relentless Abundance” (What a great name for a blog!)

She has described her EC experiences so far with a great introduction about the abilities of her 4 month old to communicate and then wait while on an airplane with a long line at the loo!

She has also included those reasons to EC that most appeal to her, namely:

• Health reasons

• Attachment parenting

• Environmental reasons

• Fun

• Common sense

I’d pip them as pretty spot on for the reasons we also practice EC. Regardless of how many ‘misses’ we might have on a ‘rainy day’, or when Jett is having a ‘potty pause’ kind of planky baby day, I still keep up his nudie time at home, and outside, well, that is no-nappy time for sure! No extra washing thanks when the grass needs all the water it can get, and the wee is actually a fertiliser for our poor drought ridden ground.

What a lovely post about EC she has written, and there is a lovely ‘on potty’ photo of her little boy, Kolya. I have excerpted a bit of it to introduce it to you here:

We were on the plane to Cape Town. Over the engine noise, Kolya started fidgeting. There was a queue three-deep to get to the toilet. No way is this child going to wait that long, I figured. But the signals were hard to ignore. I stood in the queue, baby in arms, wishing that the other passengers wouldn’t take so goddamn long. Eventually the little door sign clicked green. We popped into the loo, and I whipped K’s nappy off, convinced it would be a complete disaster zone. Nothing there. I held him over the tiny airplane toilet, feeling like a freak. “Chhh chh” I whispered sheepishly. “Just in case you want to go.”

And, super-matter-of-fact, 4-month-old child did just that. Did his thing in the aeroplane loo, probably with better aim than most adults on the flight. I tried hard not to feel smug, but the truth is that one of the best parts of being a parent is feeling that you’ve succeeded in meeting one of your child’s needs, especially when he’s too young to spell them out to you verbally.

Elimination communication – otherwise known as natural infant hygiene. Big terminology for a fairly basic concept. I first heard about it while I was pregnant, and (like so many of the ideas I read about, and later ended up taking on board) it sounded weeeeeeird (no pun intended). But intriguing.

See, the commonly held western view about babies is that they can’t control their pee or poo. Leave them alone and they’ll squirt the stuff liberally all over everything. Enter the nappy industry. A baby therefore must be wrapped up for about the first three years of its life in a nice, tightly-fitting absorbent nappy at all (or most) times.

Question is: what about those aeons that passed before nappies were invented and marketed (a mere 200 or so years ago)? And: what about all those children in places where people don’t have access to – or can’t afford – nappies?

The answer is elimination communication. Except that in the places where it’s most commonly practiced, it doesn’t have a name at all. It’s just what people do.

Visit Relentless Abundance to continue reading this fab post about EC…

Opportunities to Practice Elimination Communication as a Natural Parent

I submitted the following article to Natural Parent in Australia:

Elimination Communication or EC, is an ancient approach to baby hygiene that involves getting to know your baby’s patterns and rhythms of elimination so that, together as a cooperative team, you can ‘catch’ some of their business in a potty, potty bowl or other suitable place.

Yes, you will still use nappies, despite what some dreadful articles and T.V shows love to sensationalise! Being ‘Part-Time Nappy Free‘ is perhaps a more accurate term, as you use nappies some of the time, or training pants, sometimes nappy-free time. You can certainly use nappies or other reusable cloth options as backup between potty visits. I do, and I have practiced EC since birth with both my children.

My baby is 9 months old at the moment, he is at the stage of wearing mostly cloth trainers and some nappies (I like eco-disposables for my single-use nappy needs) and he signals each day a few times with baby sign language that he needs to go! It is very thrilling. It is a gradual approach to toilet learning for sure, but this is because it is about the relationship, the communication with your baby, not about toilet training – that is just the end result, not a short term goal.

It’s actually quite fun and exciting to practice EC in this relaxed and flexible way, and may have been what your Grandma or Great Grandma did to reduce her washing load all those years ago, just as my Granny did!

Wearing and carrying your baby, breastfeeding and simply playing with your baby offer you a doorway into baby pottying. These natural mothering activities can be used to turn on your EC ‘baby radar’ and help you to begin reducing your use of nappies.

Let’s look at 3 natural parenting activities that can help you to develop your EC senses:

1. Baby wearing and carrying – you can use this closeness to reduce your need for nappies by focussing on some common signs. When your baby has a sleep in the sling, or in your arms then wakes up, you’ve got what we call a ‘Prime Time’- the need to wee wakes babies just as it does us. There’s a pretty good chance you’ll be able to catch a wee or more and start making connections with your baby by using a cue sound or word. So, have a warm potty ready, pop baby out of their sling, whip off their nappy and gently help them on the potty, talking brightly all the time. See what happens!

2. With breastfeeding, you can use this natural process as a window into the elimination rhythms of your baby. When your baby fusses at the breast, slowly remove their nappy, offer them a wee break. You may find a full bladder was distracting them from feeding. This is a really common signal to know when your baby needs to go!

3. Another game to play. When practicing EC, you’ll learn Potty Songs, make Potty Charms, as you play with Potty Puppets and enjoy fun moments connecting with your baby. When they ‘go’ in their potty or while you hold them lovingly in an ‘in-arms’ position to go, cheer, enjoy their thrill as they look up at you with bright eyes that say “You got it, Mum!”

Smaller washes each week? Yes, please! Fewer nappies to buy? Yes, please! EC offers you these opportunities to reduce costs and the ecological footprint of your baby as you enhance your relationship with new tools of understanding; using your familiarity with their elimination patterns and rhythms to reduce the amount of waste and washing produced by your baby.

Imagine if every baby wore 1 less nappy each week, then, in time, one less nappy each day?

That would add up to sizeable benefits to the environment, and positive experiences around a potty will make it an everyday, familiar item, so that eventual regular toilet training can flow smoothly.

Perhaps you’ll even find yourself with a baby that only wears nappies part-time?

It’s a liberating place to be!

- Charndra Josling

Visit Natural Parent…

Elimination Communication is a fun way to connect with your baby each day.

By offering potty breaks you can reduce the waste produced by your baby, or your washing load (or both!), minimizing the environmental footprint of your baby.

Families all over the world and throughout time have used this gentle way of helping baby to stay clean and dry as much as they can (yes, not all the time), and more importantly, they enjoy the communication with their pre-verbal little baby, the insight into their world this window can open up – it is why people get hooked when they take the plunge and have a go!

3 Key Ideas About Infant Potty Training. These Tips Will Help You to Understand EC:

1. Being part time nappy or diaper free is about the communication with your baby, NOT about early toilet training. Again – it is NOT about early toilet training – that is something different. EC is about the bond between parents and baby / toddler, developing your relationship into new areas of understanding.

2. Yes, practicing EC can mean your toddler achieves earlier independence, but it is not a given, as EC is about their personal journey – and many things in life can ‘happen’ and fluff around with that journey. Around two is general average for when EC toddlers achieve good communication, though few diapers are used daily often long before then.

3. Meanwhile you will likely use far less nappies / diapers than if you were using diapers full time, which is great for your budget, the environment and your washing load. Think of it as about reducing any sort of waste or washing related to your baby, that’s a sensible thought, whether it is one less diaper or many, you can consider yourself ‘Part Time Diaper Free‘.

Like any option, of course, if it doesn’t interest you – don’t do it! People practicing EC see it as a bond with their babies, not a competition to independence, not a way of being better – it is simply better for them.

Perhaps it will be a wonderful discovery for your family? It’s pretty easy to give it a go as your baby wears diapers between potty visits. There is no concern about ‘mess’ everywhere. Your baby will go in their diaper as usual when you miss their needs or are otherwise busy at the time.

EC is a flexible option, you need to have some daily consistency, a regular time you give your babe the ‘opportunity’ to use a baby potty to help them stay aware and familiar with a potty. Your ‘default’ is the diaper, so no loss when you are busy, like all Mamas are!

- Charndra

Pop over to Charndra’s website on part time Baby Pottying, eitherwww.PartTimeDiaperFree.com or www.PartTimeNappyFree.com.au – you can join to receive a free e-course introducing you to the Secrets of EC Confidence. Over 40 Potty Songs, plenty of tips, resources and helpful ideas to make your journey easing into EC very smooth indeed.

Give EC a go! It’s good for the Earth.

Copyright by Tribal Baby © 2009 Charndra Josling

EC, Or Elimination Communication, Is An Ancient Approach To Baby Hygiene That Involves Getting To Know Your Baby’s Patterns And Rhythms Of Elimination.

Then, Together As A Cooperative Team, You Can ‘Catch’ Some Of Their Business In A Potty, Potty Bowl Or Other Suitable Place.

Yes, you will still use nappies, despite what some dreadful articles and T.V shows love to sensationalise! Being ‘Part-Time Nappy Free’ is perhaps a more accurate term, as you use nappies some of the time, or training pants, sometimes nappy-free time. You can certainly use nappies or other reusable cloth options as backup between potty visits. I do, and I have practiced EC since birth with both my children.

My baby is 9 months old at the moment, he is at the stage of wearing mostly cloth trainers and some nappies (I like eco-disposables for my single-use nappy needs) and he signals each day a few times with baby sign language that he needs to go! It is very thrilling.

EC is a gradual approach to toilet learning for sure, but this is because it is about the relationship, the communication with your baby, not about toilet training – that is just the end result, not a short term goal.

It’s actually quite fun and exciting to practice EC in this relaxed and flexible way, and may have been what your Grandma or Great Grandma did to reduce her washing load all those years ago, just as my Granny did!
Wearing and carrying your baby, breastfeeding and simply playing with your baby offer you a doorway into baby pottying. These natural mothering activities can be used to turn on your EC ‘baby radar’ and help you to begin reducing your use of nappies.

Let’s look at 3 natural parenting activities that can help you to develop your EC senses:

1. Baby wearing and carrying – you can use this closeness to reduce your need for nappies by focussing on some common signs. When your baby has a sleep in the sling, or in your arms then wakes up, you’ve got what we call a ‘Prime Time’- the need to wee wakes babies just as it does us. There’s a pretty good chance you’ll be able to catch a wee or more and start making connections with your baby by using a cue sound or word. So, have a warm potty ready, pop baby out of their sling, whip off their nappy and gently help them on the potty, talking brightly all the time. See what happens!

2. With breastfeeding, you can use this natural process as a window into the elimination rhythms of your baby. When your baby fusses at the breast, slowly remove their nappy, offer them a wee break. You may find a full bladder was distracting them from feeding. This is a really common signal to know when your baby needs to go!

3. Another game to play. When practicing EC, you’ll learn Potty Songs, make Potty Charms, as you play with Potty Puppets and enjoy fun moments connecting with your baby. When they ‘go’ in their potty or while you hold them lovingly in an ‘in-arms’ position to go, cheer, enjoy their thrill as they look up at you with bright eyes that say “You got it, Mum!”

Smaller washes each week? Yes, please!

Fewer nappies to buy? Yes, please!

EC offers you these opportunities to reduce costs and the ecological footprint of your baby as you enhance your relationship with new tools of understanding; using your familiarity with their elimination patterns and rhythms to reduce the amount of waste and washing produced by your baby.

Imagine if every baby wore 1 less nappy each week, then, in time, one less nappy each day? That would add up to sizeable benefits to the environment, and positive experiences around a potty will make it an everyday, familiar item, so that eventual regular toilet training can flow smoothly.

Perhaps you’ll even find yourself with a baby that only wears nappies part-time? It’s a liberating place to be!

Pop over to Charndra’s website on part time Baby Pottying, eitherwww.PartTimeDiaperFree.com or www.PartTimeNappyFree.com.au – you can join to receive a free e-course introducing you to the Secrets of EC Confidence. Over 40 Potty Songs, plenty of tips, resources and helpful ideas to make your journey easing into EC very smooth indeed.

Give EC a go! It’s good for the Earth.

Snooty Booty Diapers is a WAHM business that is based in New Jersey, in the USA. It is run by Michelle, who has used modern cloth diapers with her own baby girl since she was just 5 months old.

Like many modern cloth diaper users, she discovered their efficiency and beauty and was converted! Then she saw an opportunity to run her own home-based business supporting her family and the many other Moms and WAHM’s out there..

Snooty Booty Diapers offers many of the best and most popular cloth diaper brands, including Knickernappies, Fuzzi Bunz, bumGenius! and Tiny Tush.

There is a flat rate of shipping on orders over $50 within the United States, and a variety of diaper giveaways and contests, exclusive offers and a coupon to use if you sign up to the mailing list of Snooty Booty Diapers.

From the Snooty Booty Diapers website:

If you’re looking for a cloth diaper store with popular brands of cloth diapers, competitive prices and attentive customer service, you have found it at Snooty Booty Diapers!

Enjoy a great selection of cloth diapers and accessories, as well as a unique offering of products for mom.

Snooty Booty Diapers is big enough to offer what you need, but small enough to give you personal attention and strives to offer excellent customer service.

Have questions about cloth diapers?

Expecting and want to use cloth diapers, or need help setting up your cloth diaper registry?

Considering cloth diapers and not sure where to start?

Visit Snooty Booty Diapers…

Kirsten Dirksen wrote this great piece at the Huffington Post:

Who Decides When to Potty Train: You, Baby or Big Diapers?

At my moms’ group a few months ago, another mother noticed my then 2-year-old & 1 month daughter wasn’t wearing a diaper and said, “She’s young to be without a diaper“. Used to hearing this since we’d started her on the pot at 16 months, I just said “oh”. She continued, “Yeah, you potty train at 2 and a half“.

I wanted to laugh at her certainty. My sister had just spent the past year agonizing over whether she’d started too early. A neighbor worries she started too late. A dose of uncertainty seems to be part of the protocol for potty training these days. Part of the problem is moms are mostly given advice like don’t “start it before your child is ready”, “don’t push your toddler to potty train” and “there’s no ’should’ about it”.

So if you choose not to wait until your 7-year-old asks you to let him wear underwear, you’re left with trying to guess when your child might be expressing a “dawning awareness of when pee pee and poo poo are happening” or quizzes asking you to evaluate: “Your child has been sitting around in a wet or dirty nappy. What’s his mood like?”

Removing the diaper at 16 months

Given all this pressure to let your child find his own way out of diapers, I was a bit hesitant when my mom suggested she begin potty training my 16-month-old during our 2 month visit last summer. But I was buoyed by the knowledge that she had done the same to all 6 of us kids and none of us seemed to be suffering any long-term incontinence or “feelings of failure, inadequacy or general stress” around bathroom visits.

Plus, I knew that it wasn’t just my mother who thought it normal to remove the diaper by 18 months, but most of her generation and those before her. In the 1950s when nearly all kids used cloth diapers, 95% were potty trained by 18 months, but now that nearly 95% of kids are in disposables, only about 10% train by 18 months, and the average age for completion of training has advanced from around eighteen months to thirty-six months and beyond. Given that kids kids go through about 2,000 to 3,000 diapers per year, this extra time hanging out in their excretions adds a lot to our landfills

Continue reading this story…

Charndra

 

This is an older article from 2007, I remember it coming up on the EC discussion list and lots of us popped over to add to the thread. It is nicely balanced and open-minded about EC, which is lovely!

Here’s an excerpt:

Q&A: early toilet training

Emily writes:

“I’m pregnant with my first child, and have been reading a bit about the early toilet training/diaperless baby movement. It’s hard to get a read on it because people either think it’s crazy or genius. I don’t think that early toilet training warps a child psychologically, and I think the environmental arguments for it are compelling. Also, I’d rather start early than be frantically trying to toilet train the two months before preschool, like my niece. But I do wonder if it’s doable, or more work than it’s worth. What do you and your readers think? I’d be particularly interested in those who tried it and gave up, or those who combined it with daycare.”

 

I think when you call it “early toilet training” people do think it’s nuts, because “training” implies control, and babies just can’t control when they poop or pee.

But when you think of it as “elimination communication” or early toilet learning, it makes a ton more sense, because babies can absolutely communicate.

In both directions. If you think about it in terms of the way babies get themselves fed, the process starts to become even more clear: A baby gives little signals–smacking the lips, rooting, eventually escalating to fussing, then crying–to indicate hunger. The adult responds with food, so the next time the baby uses those same signals, and the adult responds and it starts a beautiful cycle that goes on happily until the next thing you know the kid’s saying, “Mo-om, do we have any juice boxes?”

But you can also change the course of that communication to make things more clear if you’d like. From the time my second baby was a few hours old, every time I fed him I’d say “nurse” very clearly just as I put him on. After about 5-6 days, when he’d fuss to eat I’d say “nurse” and he knew I understood and was coming and he’d calm down for the few seconds it took. Some people introduce a hand sign for food when their babies are a few months old, and it has the same effect, and then the child can use the sign to ask for food long before they can use words.

(Sage Advice from Moxie there!)

Visit Ask Moxie to read the rest and also the comments…

 

One Less Diaper at a Time = EC!

I joined Greenwala a while back – they often have great contest ideas like the “Tree Hugging” Photo contest – cute!

The latest I learnt this morning in the newsletter is:

What’s Your Story?Greenwala and helpareporterout.com want your help identifying stories about the most amazing eco-friendly, environmentally-conscious companies, products and services on the planet.

Submit a photo of the company (product, logo, or representative image) and a description – up to 500 words about how it is helping to reduce our impact on the planet and revolutionize the green economy. The story that gets the most votes will win a $500 Amex Gift card — and a featured article about the company, product or service on the Greenwala blog.

Greenwala is planting an additional tree for each entry with Trees For the Future.

I thought it was a great opportunity to spread the word about baby pottying as a way to be more eco-conscious about baby-waste!

Here is my entry:

Part Time Diaper Free! Can Just 1 Less Diaper Make a Difference?

Recycling is Great – Reducing is Better. With Baby Pottying You Will Reduce Your Babys Diaper Use!

Part Time Diaper Free is an initiative to support you as a parent of a baby in diapers to gradually REDUCE the environmental impact of your baby.

What if your baby wore just 1 less diaper a day?

Imagine the collective waste reduction of that simple idea, considering the millions of babies born each year and the billions of diapers trashed into landfill…

By discovering how to apply, to your usual day, several opportunities for your baby to ‘go’ in a baby potty, you can introduce them to the potty and participate in a natural process that has been a part of mothering for as long as women have been having babies!

Imagine this: Your baby needs a diaper change. You take them to the diaper change table, remove it, then pop them on a little potty and sing a potty song, and give a little sign or cue word – and they tinkle or more! Just like that, the next fresh diaper you put on will be drier for longer. In time, you will start communicating with your baby in a back and forth way, and less diapers will be the result.

Be reassured that with Baby Pottying, your baby wears a diaper between their potty visits, and you can offer just once a day and see how you go – easy! You might just see the end of many messy diaper changes before long, so be prepared for that…

My story is that I discovered how much FUN it was to ‘practice’ baby pottying, known by the cumbersome term ‘Elimination Communication’, and felt fabulous about how we used less and less diapers with our baby. So I wanted to share that joy with other parents, helping more babies to use fewer diapers overall, and helping our Earth in the process. I created part-time diaper free as a way to do that!

Created by Charndra Josling, Part Time Diaper Free! exists to help you to re-discover the way mothers before you reduced their use of diapers gently, gradually, resulting in fine eco-karma as your babys eco-footprint is smaller. With lots of resources to help out, including a free online guided tour (The 7 Secrets to Diaper Free Confidence) and a members only online course as well.

‘Diaper-Free’ is the destination, not the start, remember that!

Curious? Pop by…

Visit Part Time Diaper Free!

If you have a moment, please visit Greenwala to vote for my entry - and other great eco ideas from all over the place – one vote per entry is allowed per day.