A while ago I asked my Facebook friends for their thoughts on cloth diapering. I was interested in hear more about how it works and what the benefits/drawbacks might be. Unfortunately, I only heard back from people who had not cloth diapered-and they, for the most part, gave a resounding "absolutely NO!". I was a little disappointed that I didn't hear from people who had actual experience with cloth diapers and I was surprised to hear such opinionated responses from people who didn't have actual experience with the actual product in question.
Yesterday, my friend Bridgett sent me an email with the link to a podcast about whether or not to diaper....at all! Here is the link to the podcast if you are interested in listening. It's a little long so I will give you the Cliff's Notes version. According to Kristen and Molly (the podcasters) about half of the world's children never wear diapers. Most of these renegade children live in Asia and Africa. The whole process of raising your children to not use diapers is called Elimination Communication. Elimination Communication is basically a potty training technique that you start from birth and the parents use timing, signals/cues, and intuition to determine when baby has to go! People who use the Elimination Communication technique tend to result in a fully potty-trained child by age 1 (up until then, it's probably pretty hard to find anyone who wants to hold your baby).
I actually know someone who did Elimination Communication with his daughter and found it to work quite well. He did use diapers as a back-up (in case his intuition was lacking) but would also follow a regular schedule of holding his newborn baby girl over the toilet and making a series of noises to "train" the baby to use the toilet on command.
I had no idea that there were so many options when it came to potty-training my child. The funny thing is that I have potty trained more children than I will ever have due to fact that I work with special needs children. This being said, I'm sure that I will have the hardest time with my own children!
Until the time comes, I'm going to continue to be blissfully ignorant and assume my child will just come out potty trained!
3 comments:
OMG! I have never heard of this Elimination thing. I imagine there would be lots of accidents...and also A LOT of time standing over a toilet. Interesting!
Liz, I find your blog to always by hysterical and it gives me a big chuckle every time I read an update. I hope you don't mind me reading your blog. I live in Washington (the state not the D.C.) and A LOT of the wives in my squadron use cloth diapers. They don't use the old school kind with big diaper pins and lots of diaper fabric squares. They use the ones called Fuzzy Buns, BumGenius, or such like that. Most mom's have their favorite brands, those are just some of the ones I have heard about. They are basically reusable outer shells that you put inserts in to absorb the messes. Most have attached sprayer hoses to their toilets to discard the messes and then wash the shells as usual. They shells adjust to fit different sizes as the child grows. http://www.fuzzibunz.com/
Most of the moms did this to save money in the long run, it is quite an upfront investment. I would check out craiglsist.org to see who has some for sale to just give it a quick try before completely ruling the ickiness out.
Megan Stolle (used to be Megan Francis... related to Courtney and Krysten)
Oh Megan, I remember you! You didn't have to leave the whole family's name and your SS# and blood type... Please know that you are way more memorable than you give yourself credit for.
Yeah, I was really interested in the modern form of cloth diapering. We are most likely going to start out using disposables and then might make the change once we have a routine down. No need to get crazy with lots of new things all at once.
I'm glad you enjoy the blog! I'm just happy someone reads it. It makes me more likely to update.
I hope you are well. Keep in touch!
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