TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Diaper-Free Baby Movement Slowly Catching On

ADVERTISEMENT

By AMY ELLINOR, Tribune Correspondent

Published: October 11, 2007

For some people, potty training is a breeze. I once met a mom who told me that her daughter just decided at 20 months that she wanted to go on the potty and that was it.

I think I had a more typical experience. I had to hunker down for a full week until my eldest would go on the potty, and it took a couple more weeks to get her out of diapers during the day, followed by a month or two before she could wake up dry. For me, it was a lot of work.

I remember when I first heard the term "diaper-free baby." An old college acquaintance had decided to raise her son without ever using any kind of diaper, what's known as elimination communication. I thought she was crazy. I didn't want to potty train for weeks, let alone years.

I didn't think she would be able to keep it up, but I heard she is a mentor for other parents in Seattle who want to practice EC.

According to a recent Associated Press report, the diaper-free movement was founded on the belief that babies are born with the ability to signal when they have to relieve themselves. This can mean everything from watching a newborn's body language to teaching a pre-verbal child how to signal that he has to go.

The parents who practice EC look for these cues to tell them when they should run the baby over to the toilet, sink or nearest tree every time they think the baby has to go. When baby is in position, Mom or Dad mimics the hissing sound of a stream of urine to induce peeing. Eventually, the babies are able to get on somewhat of a schedule or show clear signs of when they want go.

Pictures on the Web site diaperfreebaby.org show smiling moms holding chubby little baby bums over the toilet. With other people's children, it looks pretty hygienic. But my little breastfed potato didn't have tiny little tinkles. To me it seemed like eight of the 10 newborn diapers she filled everyday could be characterized more as an explosion. Going diaper-free for me would have meant walking around looking like I just escaped from a bog of quicksand.

I can just imagine how my husband would handle the inevitable accidents, what ECers call "misses." I can hear him coughing and gagging now. He's already not a big fan of dirty diapers. Sometimes when he gets stuck changing a particularly foul load, I'll appear in the doorway just in time to exploit the situation.

"I'll change it …for five bucks."

Parents who have embraced EC as a lifestyle claim that it's a natural way to raise your child, because that's how they do it in parts of rural Africa and Asia. I think I'd rather walk 10 miles with a bucket on my head to fetch water than spend the day changing sheets, washing comforters and trying to get baby mess out of the carpet.

Still, with all of the perceivable drawbacks, EC is gaining in popularity. According to Elizabeth Parise, spokesperson for diaperfreebaby.org, the online EC support groups in the United States added 248 new members between March and July, bringing the total online membership number to 2,330. The Tampa support group currently has 25 members.

Parise was quick to point out that the actual number of people who practice EC is hard to gauge because there isn't a formal registry.

"Many areas hold DiaperFreeBaby meetings but don't run online groups," she explained. "Even in areas where there are online groups, many people attend the in-person meetings but don't join the online groups. We have grown so quickly that we are just now instituting a method for keeping track of attendees at in-person meetings better so that these figures will be more well-known in the future."

I didn't have the heart to tell Parise that we've recently started potty training our second child the traditional way. I've resurrected the Elmo doughnut, dusted off the Dora potty-time buzzer and purchased a bunch of fruit snacks for the occasion. While I'm not looking forward to spending an inordinate amount of time in the bathroom again, I am looking forward to getting rid of the diapers.

This is something we all can agree on.

Where should you keep an eye out for diaper-free babies? Diaperfreebaby.org lists these 10 areas with the highest membership as of July:

New York City: 209 members

East Bay San Francisco: 197 members

Mid Peninsula San Francisco: 180 members

Seattle: 161 members

Boston: 152 members

Southern California: 139 members

Austin, Texas: 119 members

Portland, Ore: 110 members

Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas: 109 members

Maryland/Virginia/ Washington, D.C.: 104 members

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT