Elimination Communication

When I was in college, I spent a semester in Nepal.  I lived with a family in a small farming village on the edge of the city of Kathmandu.  A lot of things were different there -- among them a lack of indoor plumbing and, outside of the city, a general absence of diapers.  Years later, when I taught English in China, I again noticed the lack of diapers.  Babies wore split-crotch pants and their little bums hung out into the cold.  They seemed quite comfortable that way, more comfortable than a kid in a dirty diaper back home.  

I knew that I didn't like diapers as a way of dealing with waste.  After all, would you want to sit in your pee or poo a large part of the day?  Of course not.  Although it's not culturally acceptable to have kids running around here with naked bottoms here in the postmodern west, there is a small fringe movement aimed at keeping babies' bottoms clean by helping them use the toilet, potty, or sink instead of their pants, at least some of the time.  Elimination Communication (EC, for short) is supposed to be good for the environment, and good for babies.

Sadly, it does not decrease the need for diapers, at least not yet.  I go through about 18 cloth pre-fold diapers a day, along with an occasional disposable, even though I'm now catching several pees and poos every day, too.  I read that the average baby uses 8-12 diapers/day.  Are they wet most of the time?  I'd guess so. The upside is that since I started trying to practice EC, Nova hasn't had even a whiff of diaper rash.  At home during the day, she's usually bare-bottomed or wearing a pre-fold with no cover, which is usually dry. 

For now, we don't save on laundry, but I hope that we will in the long run.  We do produce less solid waste, though, with many fewer diapers going into the landfill, and I'm convinced that EC combined with cloth diapering is cleaner for the baby (that's Nova) and better for the environment than the more popular alternative of disposable diapers.  

Comments

Unknown said…
Meanwhile, the way Kiko is going, he'll be in disposables when he's 21. He refuses to use the potty despite months and months of positive encouragement. He also refuses to let me take off dirty nappies, I have to fight with him sometimes for up to half an hour to get them off him, although he's more accommodating now of not having the nappy on in the house. But then he won't use the potty! Every day is a battle of the wills and today's one ended up with a little voice piping: "Oh dear!" and a gallon of wee was all over the floor, soaking the rug and everything. No wonder I'm permanently exhausted.
March 31, 2008 at 12:58 PM
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