Instructions

I get a lot of questions about this whole thing and people are always asking me if she really doesn't wear a diaper and things like that. Also, my friend Kari is struggling to potty train her toddler and is contemplating trying this out with her 6-month-old to avoid conventional potty training the second time around. So that was just the motivation I needed to write a more comprehensive synopsis of the "diaper-free" method, which, for me, is not so diaper free. But hopefully she will be well before the one year mark.

So here we go with some background. Mothers and families all over the world raise their kids this way and have for centuries. Didn't you ever wonder what people did before diapers? This is one of the things people did! In Western cultures it's more of an attachment parenting thing (attachment parenting is basically doing everything you can to promote a strong attachment with your baby and minimizing the baby's discomfort in any way possible in order to build trust. This includes letting your kids sleep with the parents in the "family bed," responding to crying, not making the baby cry it out ever, etc. I pick and choose strategies from this parenting philosophy, but I don't swallow it whole. It includes a bit too much coddling for my taste. I think kids are resilient and can overcome and figure out more things than we give them credit for. And I want to promote that resilience as well as a strong and trusting relationship. Some struggling builds strength and confidence. No pain, no gain. To an extent, anyway). You can start this with babies that aren't so new. I first stumbled across it when Ryker was two and I think it was too late for him by then, but lots of people have success starting as late as six months or so because the baby has not yet lost awareness of the need to go. In fact, some cultures don't start until the baby starts eating solid food at around 6 months. Some people have even had success with babies older than 12 months (there are lots of online resources for starting with an older baby that I found when Ryker was 2). You can also start slowly like we are doing, or just do it part time, like only when you're at home or something. Some cultures start by mastering the morning pattern and then add the after nap pee, after nursing pee, etc. There are lots of way to do this and no one "right" way. To some people this sounds like a whole lot of extra work, but that's debatable. Anyone that has tried potty training with a willful two-year-old would know. There are lots of physical benefits to this as well. Diaper-free babies never lose their awareness of the need to pee or poop, so they will forever go when their bodies tell them to, unlike the rest of us that hold it until we just can't hold it anymore. Haven't you ever seen your kids do the pee-pee dance? They're waiting too long. Holding it is associated with all kinds of problems from constipation to colon cancer to urinary tract infections. These kids also never learn to have a sense of shame surrounding bathroom events like we are all taught to be SO careful of as we potty train our toddlers. Aside: Alaina was just now sleeping but she started to squirm and grunt in a way that made me think she was going. So I just took her to pee and it took a half a minute or so for her to collect it all, but she went. A lot. After my quit-too-soon misses of late, I decided to just hold her in position until she fusses. It worked! Anyway, those are some of the benefits besides not having to potty train toddlers for me. And finally, you don't have to not use diapers! We definitely use diapers. I'm not into laundry; just ask Brice the laundry man. I just take the diaper off when I want to take her potty. That way I don't have to be perfectly in tune all the time, nor do I have to clean mustard poop off of everything. So, those are the central background issues to this idea. Be sure to ask if I didn't cover something you were wondering about.

How to start:
Watch for cues. Cues are anything that the baby does right before she goes. Some babies wiggle, some get still, some get a certain "look" in their eyes. It helps to watch your baby naked for a while to see what they do. For me, apparently, I notice a lot of the cues subconsciously, but they don't register as a "thing" she does differently so going off of intuition is working better than strictly "looking" for cues, though I do that too.

When you notice the baby going, whether it's in a diaper or over a rag or in the tub or whatever, make some sort of sound that you will always use as a signal--a cue of your own. We use a sssss sound with a bit of a whistle to it for pee and a low whistle for poop. Some people say pee and poop or pee-pee and ca-ca or shhhh and a grunting sound. One culture I read about blows on the back of the baby's head. So really, anything goes. When the baby is older (about 6 or 7 months) I'll also use the sign for "toilet" so the baby will be able to tell me when she has to go before she would be able to say it.

Next, start holding the baby over a receptical of some sort (sink, toilet, tupperware, toddler potty, whatever) when you think she has to go and make your cue sound. We actually did the sound and holding her over the receptical from the beginning. The position you hold the baby in becomes a signal as well. The position you hold the baby in should be a sort of squatting position because it's the best one for the body to eliminate in, meaning most effective and healthiest. So the knees should be up and out and higher than the hips. Alaina is so small that I can hold her legs with my fingers and her torso with my palms with the heel of my hands under her armpits. You should also rest the baby's back against your front to provide a sense of security so they aren't hovering in the air. Some people hold the baby in a cradle position with their bum hanging down which might be easier for a bigger baby--I don't know yet. The baby will let you know if they don't need to go. Alaina starts to squirm and cry if it's a no and if she does need to go, she holds really still or maybe kicks her legs around and grunts right before she gets still and goes.

Once you are feeling confident about it, you can start to really go diaper-free. Be sure to take the baby pee before you get in the car though! Some people have a tupperware with a good lid in the car at all times for outings. As the baby gets older and mobile, she will start to go to the place where you pee her or bring you the "pot" when she has to go. If you use the sign, the baby can start to sign to you when she needs to go (probably around 8 or 9 months). She'll still need help with clothes and wiping for a while, but that's a small price to pay to not have to change diapers in my book!

I think that's about it. The book I have goes way more in depth and provides lots of tips for tricky situations or extenuating circumstances (blindness in the parent, for instance!) and lots of cross cultural stuff. It's also a bit... froofy, if you know what I mean; a bit too over the top with its feel-good "vibe" for my taste, but the information is great. So if you want or need more info, feel free to ask and if you want to buy the book, I posted info about it in the sidebar. If you click on the book, it should take you to amazon.com or somewhere else you can buy it. This is just the the best I could do to sumarize the key components well enough for someone else to try it (go Kari!) without having to read the whole entire book (what kind of nut-job has the desire or the time to read an entire book about baby bowel movements anyway!? Oh, right. Just me). There are also lots of things on the internet if you search for "diaper free baby" or "elimination communication" or "natural infant hygiene." Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any cross cultural stuff on the internet, probably because they don't have a name for it; it's just what they do. But every now and then I come across a picture of a toddler in crotch-less pants and that's a dead give-away.

Good luck to any of you willing to blaze the trail with me!

Catch up

Okay, so I've been MIA in the blogging world lately. Just a bit busy. So to catch up, I had a week or so where I had a lot of good catches. Poop ones even. Once I thought, "Oh, I'm too late. Oh, well, I'll just take her anyway." I wasn't too late and it was a perfect poop catch. On a few mornings, I took her first thing in the morning and caught poops both times. I have been catching random pees now and then and I can really tell that she's responding to the cues. Whether she's responding to the verbal ones or just the position (which you can see in the picture above), I don't know, but it's working! I can also tell that she holds her poop. Usually she will fill the diaper if I don't take her--she rarely has little squirts. But when I hold her over the "pot" and she goes, it's not as much as it is in the diaper when she's been holding it. I feel like we have success proportional to the amount of effort we put in. I'm really hopeful that when we have more effort to put in, things will all come together and we won't have any misses! Speaking of misses, this past week has not gone quite so well. I keep thinking that she needs to go but she doesn't and she just starts to cry at me. Or I don't wait long enough and she pees within five minutes of having the diaper put back on. It seems that intuition is actually the best way to do it. I think that I can notice subtle cues subconsciously but I can't really pinpoint what exactly they are. It seems like when I'm missing more, I'm thinking more too. If I just take her when it feels like an impulse, things tend to go better. Weird, I know. And not very helpful to others that want to try it, but that's what I've got so far. I also think that it might help when things aren't going very successfully so have her spend some time without a diaper. It seems like after I watched her patterns that way for a little while, the intuition was more on target. So maybe I'll try that again this weekend or something.

By the way

I just discovered comments on other posts. My other blog sends me e-mails when comments get posted and I forgot to set this one to do the same. So to respond to some of the comments:

I changed the pee cue because it just didn't come naturally to say thhhh and I always wanted to say shhh instead, but the slight whistling "ssss" sound is working well. I like the chusheng idea so if the low whistle I started using the other day doesn't work out, I'll try that. Thanks, Courtney!

And to answer Laina's question, we do use diapers, but I hope we won't need to by the time she's about 6 or 8 months old. Earlier would be better, but I don't think this will all really and truly come together until I'm not in school. I think we can make some progress on it until then, but I think that to perfect it, I need to not have such an insane schedule. Maybe we can, but if we don't, I won't give up on it. According to this philosophy, there's nothing wrong with that. It's not an all-or-nothing kind of thing. Some people never use diapers, some people don't even start until their baby is a few months old, some people use diapers when they're out and about but nothing when they're home. But most people abandon the diapers sometime in the first year when they realize they just don't need them. Looking forward to that!

Thanks for your support and encouragement! I don't feel brave or dedicated or cool for doing this; for me, it's the easy way out of potty training! Well, that and that it just seems like the right thing to do for us since the regular potty training age is such a hard time for my relationships with my kids anyway; I don't know if it's the age or the potty training, but potty training issues were the first time I ever got really frustrated with my kids. I felt like it really damaged our realationships. And it could have just been the age and them trying to be independent, but I really just felt like they were at war with me over the whole potty thing and I don't want to damage my relationships with my kids like that! So when I found a potential solution, it just made sense. It's more fear than courage that drives me. But thanks for thinking I'm cool and brave!

A good week!

Again, I haven't worked on...okay, I need to come up with the right name for this. Diaper free is kind of a misnomer for us. Alaina is usually in a diaper, but I try to keep it dry as much as possible and I try to watch for cues and things like that, but she's not really "diaper free" very much. Other names for it include Elimination Communication (which is just too...I don't know...sounds like a song from a kids' show) and Natural Infant Hygiene (too hippie for me). So what is it that we're doing? Peeing the baby? That could work. Or baby potty training? It doesn't seem like training--I don't feel like I'm being trained (does any mother get trained to respond to baby's need to eat?) nor does she seem to be getting trained. Hmmm. Maybe, for us, it's just the p-pot. That's what I have all the tupperwares labeled as. So maybe we'll use that for now.

Anyway, I haven't worked on the p-pot with Alaina as much as I'd hoped, but we did have some key breakthroughs this week. We've had several catches where I just noticed her going in time to issue a cue in those moments when she's been diaperless. But then there were two times when we had catches because I noticed her cue. I was nursing her and she got all squirmy so I unlatched her and undressed her and held her over the pot and she went right away!

She's also starting to recognize the cues I give her: one of them is a whistling "sssss" sound and the other is just the position I hold her in. One morning I was changing her diaper and I could tell she'd gone not too long ago because the diaper was pretty full and quite warm. But I thought I'd try anyway, so I held her "in position" and gave her the "ssss" cue and she got all still for a few seconds and then she went! Not much, but some. So I could tell that she recognized the cue to go. And it showed that she does have some bladder control.

We've also had some poop catches. Once, I almost caught it, but I second guessed myself. I didn't think I could make it in time, but then I changed my mind and decided to try anyway. I caught some of it and realized that if I had taken her when it first crossed my mind, I probably would have caught all of it. This morning, she had a big squirt, so I hurried to clean that up so I could get her in position and try to catch the rest. This time I was quick enough to clean her up and catch the rest with her in position, wheras I usually have to catch the rest in some really awkward in-between position.

The realization I came to today is that I might have some luck, now that she's responding to my cues, if I set the schedule instead of trying to adopt hers. If I take her at regular times throughout the day, and they are often enough, then she might just adjust to going whenever I provide the p-pot rather than me trying to observe her schedule and provide the p-pot in time. I'm not sure how often I'll have to take her, but I was thinking to start, take her before or after every feeding (I'm not sure which would be best; on the one hand, she'll be hungry and crying and on the other, she'll get woken up) and once or twice in between. So that's the goal for this week and we'll see what happens!