Have you heard of EC? It stands for Elimination Communication, or Natural Infant Hygiene. Back when a lot of us were babies, our parents did this and called it potty training. It is really more like “mommy training”. Look for the cues of the babies and take them to the potty in lieu of diapers. If your parents or grandparents claimed that their babies were potty trained by a year old, they were most likely practicing Elimination Communication.

When I first became a parent I thought parents who did such things were archaic and wasting their time. I couldn’t comprehend why any parent would bother being a slave to their child’s potty needs. HELLO!? Isn’t this what diapers were invented for? Who were they kidding to say that their child was actually potty trained when the child could not crawl, much less walk on over to the potty, drop drawer and go when necessary?! Silly parents. And what in the world is a “potty cue” anyway? Ew.

Sometimes the whole cycle of parenting comes full circle.

When I was pregnant with Teegan and exhausted, Dalton was 2 and potty-trained during the day but still soaking through diapers at night. One night I fell into my pregnant stupor called sleep before remembering to put a diaper on Dalton. I woke up in a fog at 4am to realize what I’d done and was shocked to see that he had not wet the bed. I let him be and he’s been out of diapers an dry at night ever since. His body had conditioned to pee in the diaper. Without it, he held off. Done deal. I guess it got the wheels turning.

When Teegan was a baby I was still thinking about this. And also hating diapers. A lot. I kept him naked, as a baby, all the time. When he was 9 months old I noticed that he was routinely sleeping through naps, naked, and staying dry. By the time he was 12 months old I had a pretty good grasp on when he needed a diaper and when he didn’t. We had formed our own sort of diaper dance. It worked for us.

By the time Noah was born, I knew about EC but was far too tired to give it a shot. We did the naked nap thing and by 18 months he was also sleeping through the night without diapers. Tony and I tried to learn his cues with varying degrees of success. With Noah I learned his nighttime cues. He never once wet the bed but I could tell if he needed to pee at night by how restless he’d become. I started to really “get” the whole potty cue thing. It wasn’t that I had to make much effort. I just knew him very well, just like I knew when he was hungry or sleepy.

Along came Addison. Different gene pool, same general results. In fact she is sleeping naked in her crib right now. I haven’t dared to try her dry at night yet but maybe in six months or so. But with Addison I have noticed that my instincts are even more spot-on. I can tell when she needs to “go” and she is really good at communicating that need. She got a potty for her first birthday and is happy to crawl over to it when she is naked and needs to potty. Who knows how she knew what it was or how to use it. In fact she doesn’t know how to use it. She will go potty leaning on it, not sitting on it. Very funny. But she gets the general idea.

The interesting part to me is that there seems to be almost no cues when my kids are in diapers. They could be poopy or soaked and indifferent. To me, that’s really gross. Why do we want our kids to sit in their sh*t? Or sleep covered in pee? Yucko. It is so funny to me how full circle I’ve gone on this issue. Now I think about tribal groups in the world that still do not use diapers and carry their babies all day and just hold them away from themselves when they know the baby has to go and I think “right on”. Of course that’s not exactly sanitary but the point is, diapers suck. I hate them. What I once thought was archaic I now think makes a lot more sense than sitting in diapers all the time. No doubt diapers are a wonderful convenience that I will NEVER stop using completely with my babies (or at least I say that now! haha). But I can now see both sides of this interesting parenting philosophy. I still wouldn’t say we practice EC but we have a happy balance that works for us.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 21st, 2007 at 10:33 am and is filed under Parenting, Taboo Topics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.