Iron Poo and Potty Terrors

The quickest version of the story (and I need quick since we're so far behind...) is that the iron supplements the doctors have been insiting we give Grasshopper made her poo do it's best to turn into actual hunks of iron. The poo got to be so hard it hurt her to poo, and in a perfect world, we would have figured this out instantly and put her onto a stool softener (Miralax, which is what my sister-in-law, who is a pediatrician, recommended.)

What happened is that she began despising her potty -- at first she wouldn't sit down for longer than five seconds, and with time, the sight of it made her howl. We thought she had a urinary tract infection, and we went to the doctor. Of course, she wasn't up to peeing in a bottle, and so the nurses in the office tried to catheterize our already nearly-demented-by-anger baby. The moment they stuck the catheter tube in she managed to send a stream of urine directly into the nurse's hair, and to poo on the table. Oh so embarassing for mommy and daddy and nurse, mildly ameliorating for baby.

Because the world works this way, we were at the night clinic because the next evening -we were scheduled to get on a flight to Virginia. Greendaddy was due to be a groomsman in a wedding that weekend, and we had scheduled a few extra days around that trip so that we could also spend quality time with Greendaddy's brother and his family. We ended up at the night clinic when we realized that Grasshopeer wasn't being suddenly moody about the potty, and that there was a real problem. Unfortunatley, the doctor on duty had enough time to tell us he didn't think it was a UTI, but not enough time to help us figure out what was really at issue.

Since Greendaddy's brother M. and sister-in-law V. are both doctors -- she is a pediatrician, even -- we figured we'd get on the plane, despite the fact that the cream the doctor had given us hadn't helped Grasshopper feel a smidgeon better. Our trip to Virginia was tear-filled and painful for Grasshopper, Greendaddy and I were stressed and ready to strangle each other because of it, and our family was gifted the pleasure of five days of ailing, suffering two-year-old screams and matching edgy parents. After a few days there, however, V. realized that though Grasshopper was peeing regularly -- though unhappily -- she had stopped pooing altogether, and we went out and bought the MiraLax.

By the time we got home, Grasshopper was regular again. But she didn't lose her fear of the potty. She still refused to sit on it.

You have to understand that this was the first time in her life that she ever really regularly used diapers. We caught her poo and pee in a bucket from the time she was two weeks old, and as I've written before, there were less than a dozen missed poos in the last year -- almost none since she was old enough to walk to the potty and sit down on it.

In Virginia, we actually used paper diapers for the first time, because sometime in August we had sold most of her diapers and started putting her in training pants. The trainers were too thin to sustain all the peeing and pooing she was up to. Grasshoppre soiled diapers the whole weekend.

When we got back to Houston, though, we had enough spare, old diapers to switch her back over to cloth -- a move she protested, by the way. She was smitten with the absorbent nature of the paper diapers, which made it easy for her to pee and not be uncomfortable. So anybody wondering if cloth diapers really help with regular potty training: Grasshopper's experience suggests a resounding yes.

Of course, even though the cloth diapers were less comfortable when wet, she continued peeing in them for five or six days. In the end, I bribed her: I gave her dark chocolate chips when she sat on the potty, just two or three times, one day, which was enough for her to realize the potty was no longer trying to punish her. She started peeing again. But it took maybe a whole week and a half for her to start pooing in it.

Have I ever mentioned that I haven't carried diaper wipes with me, ever, because we ECd. If she pooed in her diapers at home, during this time, she'd squat and poo, and I'd immediately change her diaper with little mess. But a couple times during this period she pooed in her diaper while we were out -- and the poo got all over her butt, which, again, I have never dealt with with before (not since I babysat). I'd be in the middle of a store and gasp, "Oh my God! My baby just pooed her pants!" and then I'd have to watch people turn from me, to my nearly-two-year old, and then back to me again with this look: Duh, Mommy. What's your problem?

The internet suggested that potty regression is normal, and that it lasts two months. A thought that totally freaked me out, which in turn, made me feel ashamed: ECing isn't about forcing the baby to poo in a potty -- it's about allowing them to do what comes naturally. But since pooing in the potty was so normal for so long, I found it difficult to just be okay with the poo in the diapers. I never raised my voice or got mad at Grasshopper, but I was annoyed, and she knew that.

All this happened in a span of about two and half weeks. She's back to her normal self now, thank God, but we have to figure out a new way to give her Iron. She's not fond of Black Strap Molasses, and though I'm grateful to the MiraLax stool softener, I'm not about to make it part of her regular diet. Any helpful hints will be greatly appreciated.

(PS: Photos from our visit to Virginia -- and actual highlights of the visit -- to follow)

Notes On BabyG

Who is, by the way, no longer a baby. She is a full blown, prancing, squawking, bluffing, bossing bundle of toddlerhood. And toddlerhood is an incredible thing – I realize now that the old doctors and aunties who write books about how to be parents were not even slightly exaggerating when they talked about the extraordinary smarty-pantsedness of these little tykes. In fact, I swear to moss and emeralds and all things pretty and green that if you put your ear to my baby girl’s ear the same way you’d put your ear to a seashell, you will actually hear the gurgling and bubbling of rapidly developing human brain. (Unfortunately you won’t be able to test this fact since my baby would bite, claw, climb, stuff an elbow inside of, yank the hair above, or kiss your ear long before it reached her ear for verification.)

Proof? In just the last few days I taught her to kick! Kick! Kick! in the pool. She's mastered the difference between her arm and her elbow. We’ve taught her to sleep without breastfeeding, to carry her potty to the toilet after she’s gone (she’s not ready to dump…) A chasing game I improvised the other day has been transformed, by her, into this: she: pulling a little ball toy behind her; Mommy or Daddy: follows her while pushing the ‘popper’ toy. Sounds harmless but it means hours of minutes ‘chasing’ the baby from room to room, in a circular fashion. The whole time we have to shout: Weeeee! Weeeee! Weeeee! And if we stop, she drops her toys and shrieks! (The twos are coming on strong)

More charmingly, I taught her to open her eyes and to close her eyes last night, in hopes it’d help when it was bedtime. Only it backfired, because she makes this hilarious effort at closing the eyes. Instead of just letting her eyelids fall normally, she expends all this effort and ends up in this fluttering eyelid state. (It reminds me of that exercise where you sit in a pretend chair, and your muscles shake and buckle, and your body’s saying: don’t tell me you’ve gone and forgotten how to sit down on the floor, because if this is the best you can do, we’re in a hell of a lot of trouble…)

Travelling with Cloth Diapers

At eighteen months, BabyG was, for the most part, potty trained. She consistently told us when she needed to go to the bathroom by saying pee pee, making the pssss sound, picking up her little potty, or grunting while squatting. She would try to take her diaper off and sit on the potty without assistance, but we usually needed to help her out. When she was done, she stood up, tried to pick up the potty, and walked it over to the toilet, but I helped out because I didn't want any spillage. We thought that maybe we wouldn't even need to take diapers when travelling to India and Thailand, but BabyG did occasionally wet a diaper (but always did #2 in the potty).

It was, of course, really difficult for BabyG and MaGreen on the fourteen hour plane trip from the US to Asia. During the first half of the flight, BabyG went through all of the diapers in the handbag and MaGreen used the maxipads from the airplane lavatory to line the diaper cover. BabyG seemed to sense the diaper situation at that point and during the second half of the flight she actually used the airplane toilet with her mommy's help.

When MaGreen and BabyG walked out of the airport terminal in Bangkok, both had this look on their faces, like they were trying their hardest not to cry. When BabyG got sight of me, she did start to cry. Not a full throttle, but bewildered and weak. We gave the diapers to the hotel laundry service and they charged $1.50 per diaper! So when BabyG wet a few diapers over the next couple of days while sightseeing in Bangkok, I promptly soaked them in the sink before they started to stink and tried to dry them in the window. They didn't dry well in the window so MaGreen found a spot on the roof near the hotel's solar water heaters.

During the flight to India, BabyG wet a few more diapers and we decided to wash the whole batch in my aunt's washing machine. Until recently, none of my family members in India had washing machines. They don't have dryers. All the lines strung in the balcony and all the bars across the windows were hung with our laundry.



I like the picture above. There are BabyG's diapers, slowly drying despite the monsoon rains. It rained for three straight days when we arrived. It's so cloudy, the energy-sipping, tube light seems brighter than the natural light. My cousin's wife is there quietly arranging things. She has a degree in statistics. She says that it's difficult to find part-time work in India and concentrates on raising two children and running the household, which she does very gracefully. As we toured the state of Gujarat, I noticed the laundry hanging from all the homes, nearly every balcony festooned, some with saris billowing out. BabyG returned to her Elimination Communication ways and it was over a week before we needed the diapers washed again. We were staying at a house where a young maid did the wash by hand and I saw her make a face at the diapers but she washed them.

So we travelled to the other side of the planet using cloth diapers. In case you were wondering, it can be done. It wasn't especially hard. I washed them myself by hand, sometimes we had access to a washing machine, and other times a professional washer woman did the work. And they dried, even during the monsoon. I feel good about not leaving a trail of soiled plastic across Asia.

Tale of a Fateful Trip

I am yankering to begin this story about our camping trip to Bastrop State Park by assuring you readers that it really taught the Green family a lot about what we should do better on our next trip. Which you know means one thing: everything went wrong.

It did. Wrongness was the most confident and reliable member of the camping party GreenDaddy, BabyG and I set off on with our friends Gemini, Araf and their five year old daughter, Maha. I’m fairly certain none of us would deny it.

But just in case somebody would, I’ll make my case, which begins by explaining how the site we had planned to visit, Huntsville State Park, just an hour away from Houston, was filled. Garner State Park and the clear and cool Frio River, where I really, really want to go was too far: four hours away. So we drove to Bastrop State Park, which we knew little else about except that it had a swimming pool and pine trees. I could not dismiss a forboding feeling when I heard the park (was so lame) that even though it had two lakes, it also had to have a pool.  Something seemed amiss.  

But Bastrop is two hours from Houston and had a spot open: who cares about amiss? GreenDaddy and I spent hours Friday night amassing gear...so long we skipped breakfast and were two hours late meeting up the next morning. Then, though she didn’t scream the whole two hours, our child refused a nap and earned high high-maintenance marks.

Bastrop Park was hot. Our site was hilly, BabyG tripped, and this made her cry until daddy took her for a walk. We forgot ice. When Gemini and I went to buy some, I asked the cranky old lady in the park store where we could swim, and she told us nowhere: the pool was closed and no wading or swimming was permitted in the lakes or creeks. Since we were planning to paddle, I asked if water-contact was prohibited because the water was somehow dangerous, or if it was just a protected ecosystem. She said it was an ecosystem, and wouldn't say more. When an old volunteer guy carried our ice to the car, I asked him how to cool off. He said drive five miles to the lake in the neighboring park. We eventually did: it was a crowded, swimming-pool-sized, fairly shallow area in a lake otherwise meant for water skiers and that, Maha said (dismissivley) smelled like ketchup: otherwise it was perfect.

That night, BabyG peed the bed. Twice. It was blistering cold outside, for Texas, and we were serenaded by the continuous humming, honking and buzzing of cars passing on the nearby highway. Half the pan of oatmeal fell into the fire, that next morning. BabyG started saying bye-bye to everybody, which meant: okay, I’m ready to have been back in Houston three hours ago.  

Instead, we headed to the lake you couldn’t swim in, to kayak and fish. It turned out we were missing GreenDaddy’s kayak oars, so he and Araf rented a canoe and then Araf went fishing. It took forty mintutes to put the Klepper kayak together, after which, Gemini, Maha, BabyG and I climbed into the canoe. I took one oar as Gemini had never paddled before, and GreenDaddy took the other in his kayak.

Maha, almost immediately, wanted to go fish with her dad, and BabyG was unabashedly unimpressed with her life-jacket. She performed her best shrieking raptor imitation, non-stop, until I stopped paddling and breastfed her. Gemini didn't want to take the helm as the canoe thing was new to her. She thought she'd kill us. She didn't though: she caught on to paddling nicely.

When we reached Araf, he said he’d like a ride. GreenDaddy jumped waist deep in the water to help moor us as we transferred vessels. When Gemini’s family came back, we all decided to picnic on what ended up being waterlogged veggie burgers. Yum. After eating, we packed up and headed to our respective homes.

Fast forward twelve hours and note how GreenDaddy’s body is a minefield of flatworm infestation. It looks like countless mosquito bites. Initially, I felt sorry for him, but didn't pay much attention. When the bites seemed to multiply, I searched the internet and discovered he has swimmer's itch: bites made from a parasitic worm that cycles through snails and ducks until humans stupidly offer up their, apparently, duck-like skin. Its itch is severe (like poison ivy) as opposed to mild (like insect bites) according to the Center for Disease Control. He has over 74 bites.

So, it’s like I said, we learned a lot about what to do better, next time.

But it's also like what I didn’t say, but what GreenDaddy and I talked about half the way home. As BabyG slept peacefully in her Aloha carseat, and we were following the wildflower drenched highway back to Houston (and there were dozens of varieties of wildflowers out this weekend: in purples and reds and yellows and golds and whites and lavenders...) we talked about how we both felt toatlly relaxed. Stress-free for the first time in months.

And it occurred to us, as it has occurred to all campers at one point or another, that the swim in the grass-filled and pondy bottomed lake, the making due with imperfections, the passing of intensely intimate time with another family, the learning to wash two pounds of spinach in a plastic bag, the witnessing of somebody learning to steer a canoe, the blossoming friendship between BabyG and Maha, even the little part of beauty evident in the presence of motorhomes with their sewage systems, Christmas light pollution, and satellite televisions: the power of camping is that all of these tiny things come together and trump the obvious wrongs. And no matter how annoying the wrongs were at the time, by the ride home they seem to be integral parts of camping fun (except for those worm bites.)

I mean, I wrote all this just to say: we had fun. More fun than we've had in ages and ages. It was nice to spend that time with our friends and each other. And though next time we’ll be sure not to wade in shallow lake water we’ve been told not to swim in, and we’ll remember toys for the baby, and we’ll make simpler meals, and we’ll get up earlier and swim in cooler water…something else unexpected will happen. And we’re looking forward to finding out what it will be.

And the Student Becomes the Teacher: Elimination Communication Milestones

(BabyG: PSSSSSSSSSS!  PSSSSSSS! PSSSSSSSSSSSSS!)

BabyG Speaks, Acts, Dances, Kisses...

When she first started speaking at about 10 months, I didn't believe GreenDaddy. I had noticed the woof-woofs, but wasn't in the mood to count them. He noticed the hello, and I didn't want her first word to be delivered into a cellphone. Alas. It was.

The other first thing she started to do around this time was cough. I coughed because something got stuck in my throat, she'd giggle, and then pretend to cough. So I'd cough back, and she'd cough. Funny when we're playing in the living room, not so funny when she's in her car seat sounding like she's choking to death. (GreenDadddy reminds me: if she can cough, she's not choking. Okay. But then I'd have to be freaking out whenever she's silent in the back seat. Not really a fabulous alternative...) BabyG also thinks sneezing is hilarious, and tries to copy. BabyG thinks any grunt anybody makes and she can sort of copy is funny, too.

Her words:

• 1st: woof woof (to the dog next door & who i hate not only because she talked to him before she talked to us, but because he wakes her from her nap a few times a week, usually on days when she REALLY needs a nap)
  
• 2nd: Hello (to the cellphone which we must use more often than I realized)
  
• 2nd: Daicy (meaning, Percy, the cat, and actually, for awhile, all four legged creatures)
  
• 3rd: Qua Qua Qua (Spanish for Quack, addressed to the rubber duck)
  
• 4th: Memememe (milk, mom, feed me. maybe it doesn't even mean mom.)
  4th: Dadada (come notice me Dad. also applies to GreenDaddy's dad, V. maybe it doesn't mean dad. she says neither meme or dada with frequency. i like that our names are not her first words, by the way. i think its a good thing.)
  
• 5th+: bye
  
• dougee (dog)...
  
• aaaaahhhhh
• baa! (to the picture of a sheep)...
  
• duck (to the rubber ducky if she doesn't say qua qua)...
  
• psssst (the ec, elimination communication books said it would happen...and it has! she says psst, at least 50% of the time before she's peed. in oakland GreenDaddy's's mom would screech the car to a halt and BabyG would pee in her potty. in houston, we're just not driving around so much. and it's really cold. sometimes we hear her and don't stop...)
  
• kisses (my favorite by far. not only will she do things like climb over to whatever is impressing her most and kiss it -- be it me or her grandma or a singing airplane toy. and afterwords she'll say, 'kisses')
  

Basically, she's a genius. I think if I tried harder to coach her, she'd know more words. But I don't want to stress her out. She's coming along at her own pace rather nicely. I also suspect she's learning Spanish words from our babysitter, and my Spanish isn't good enough to catch them. I mean, the qua qua thing took me two or three weeks to acknowledge. I never learned the words for things like squirrel or quack, before, you know?

Aside from words, she's mimicing a lot. My favorites: in her picture book that has one hundred photos, she has great responses: yawns at the yawning boy, pretends to wash her hair when the baby's in the bath, and, for awhile, cried whenever she saw either the sippee cup or the spoon, until we gave her one or the other.

I thought the word books were silly when people gave them to me at the shower. I never realized that in all these months when she can't communicate with perfect control of her vocal chords, she'd use them to acknowledge meaning between herself and whoever is looking at the book with her.

Lastly, BabyG dances.  If I sing the Pookey-Poo song, or GreenDaddy sings anything, or the radio plays.  She stands up against some piece of furniture and wiggles her whole middle body like she thinks she's Elvis.

An Interview with Laurie Boucke, the Guru of Infant Potty Training

Laurie Boucke has been researching infant potty training since using it with her third son in 1979. She is the author of three books on the subject. Her most popular book is Infant Potty Training: A Gentle and Primeval Method Adapted to Modern Living, which has been translated into Italian, German, and Dutch. Her work on infant potty training has been written about in the New York Times, The Boston Globe, and other major newspapers. Her documentary, Potty Whispering, is scheduled to be released in November 2006. She kindly joined me for a live telephone interview from Boulder, Colorado on Border Crossings, a radio show on Houston's Pacifica Radio Station, KPFT 90.1.

Click here to listen to the interview. The whole thing is nearly forty-five minutes. She gives a brief explanation of the method at the beginning. We had a lot of fun doing the interview, so I imagine it will be fun to listen to. Also, here is a link to more information about infant potty training that is mentioned during the interview: pottywhisperer.com.

Potty On! Elimination Communication at 8 Months

In the first months of BabyG’s life we knew whenever she had to pee because she screamed so hard you’d think somebody was stepping on her bladder every time she had to go. I’m no Einstein, but it was pretty clear when to put her on the potty.

By the time she was four months old, however, she was so much less embittered by her elimination needs that she stopped protesting them. It was time for me to become a super observant mother who watched and/or carried the baby all day long. A mother who could anticipate pees by noting subtle signals. She rolled on her stomach…to pee? She kicked her legs frantically…a pee sign?

Sometimes. But not all the time. Truth be told, I never figured out her particular pre-pee activities. Some mothers feel like they need to pee when their baby does…I feel like I need to pee when I need to pee. My bladder isn't psychic. So I changed lots of wet diapers because we never did go full-time nakey-baby. Even when BabyG did hang out nude, she provided me with a number of puddles that I wiped with diapers.

But I didn’t loose complete faith in EC because of the following, very important mathematical equation:



In layman’s terms: two poos in a potty are more than vastly superior to fifteen wet diapers, cubed. Especially over an eight month period. And we have caught two poos in a potty most every day of BabyG’s life because she poos on schedule: when she wakes up, and then again sometime between four and seven. The afternoon poo can be tricky, but she gets whiney, still, before a poo.

When I went to Utah I missed a couple poos; and here and there we’ve had an accident. But since she was born, there haven’t been twenty messy diapers. And I never missed ALL the pees. I caught the waking up pees, some breastfeeding pees, and usually, a few other otherwise unscheduled ones every day. Though imperfect, I was content with our ECing record because of the Arnold Mankad Corollary.



Or, two poos in a potty and fifteen wet diapers per day over a period of eight months, or even 8 million months, are so much greater than and more superior to one stinky diaper smeared all over my baby's butt that it isn't even funny.

When BabyG turned six months, GreenDaddy and I began throwing the American Sign Language potty sign...making a fist with the thumb between the second and third finger and shaking it back and forth, ie, an ASL letter "p"...at BabyG as she went poo on the toilet or right after she finished.

I figured by the time she was a year old, it might mean something. I figured it’d help her let us know when she had to poo, but that it wouldn’t work for pees.

But then yesterday GreenDaddy and I noticed BabyG trying to mimic the signs. Sort of. Or was she just playing with her hands? I started checking her diaper immediately when she made the signs. Usually it was dry. I didn’t do anything and checked a minute later…it’d be newly wet.

Still, I didn’t believe. Not until this morning when she skipped her morning poo, which GreenDaddy is in charge of. He brought her back to me so he could go take a shower. I started breastfeeding her, and she stopped, looked at me, and wiggled one hand in a sort of fist, and the other she waved back and forth. I ran her to the potty and she pooed the instant she sat down. Usually you have to wait around a few minutes.

Still, I didn’t believe. I didn’t even watch for more signs most of the rest of the day. Later, I was playing with BabyG when she started making potty signals. I ran her to the potty, and again, she immediately pooed. It was early for her poo – I usually wouldn’t have taken her to the potty at that time. I was so excited I took fifty pictures. But alas, my editors won't let me post them all...but note the potty signal she is making with her hand in the third picture -- the i-just-pooed picture.



I was giddy. I took her back, to continue helping her go down for a nap, and a few minutes later she signed again. I checked her diaper and it was dry. I decided I had imagined her making signs at all because how would she have to go again, so soon? Still, about a minute later I checked the diaper and it was sopping wet. When she signed again, half an hour later, I took her to the potty and she peed again. I know enough through ECing to understand she might not yet sign for every need, but it's incredible to realize the skill is developing.

Which basically, is to say, that while I might not be a genius, my eight-month-old baby girl most definately is.

Updates

There's been a pretty long hiatus here, filled with my studying and taking my first (of three) comprehensive exams and caring for BabyG & GreenDaddy's superhuman efforts at working full-time and going to school.

So much has happened since we dropped out of blogdom. Here are some updates on old stories:

1. BABYG: started babbling (about saving the earth)
2. EC: We got so good at EC that we only had to wash diapers once a week, two or three weeks in a row...
3. EC: That phase ended and we're washing every four days, now. BabyG smiles through pees instead of screaming through them, which has thrown us for a loop.
4. NATURAL CLEANING PRODUCTS: The house has been spring cleaned with lots of vinegar and I have many updates on the home cleaning products which I am liable to share in a later post.
5. BABYG: Smiles and giggles and communicates incredible amounts.
6. GREEN LIVING: I am everyday more and more happy about the water filter a plumber attatched to our sink. That's the best green thing we've done.
7. GARDEN: Though squirrles killed most of our tiny garden, there is a giant chard that regrows everytime we cut the leaves off and eat them, there is a giant dill weed which is a fantastic looking plant, and there is a fairly twirpy looking leek doing its best.
8. CHRISTMAS TREE: Christmas holly is looking nearly dead because we never took it out of its bucket and planted it.
9. PRAIRIE, COMPOST: When we thought his parents would be visiting, GreenDaddy mowed the lawn & raked & put the scraps in the compost. Before that, I was fond of telling people that we were trying to reintroduce prairie into our back yard. In fact, I said that so much that I convinced myself it was the truth and was incredibly disappointed when GreenDaddy mowed.
10. COOLER THAN THOU: We're managing to use less than one kitchen garbage bag full of garbage a week...we compost, recycle, and use the Freecycle network to dispose of the rest of the would-be trash.
11. FREECYCLE: I have been stood up by seven or eight members of the Freecycle network who said they would come get my stuff. I called one a dip in an email to a moderater, and she acted like I wrote &#$%!, not "dip." The second round most everything was taken. I still haven't given up on Freecycle.
12. COUCH: Even though Kate gave us her couch, I didn't give away The Ugliest Couch You Have Ever Seen. Instead, I decided to use it as an experiment. I dyed one side of it by smearing shredded beets and beet water into it, then ironing it dry. It is a weird pink. I'm going to work on dying the rest of it in different vegetable or herb based dyes. Beet side looks pretty good.
13. GARDEN: One Christmas gift I gave GreenDaddy was some crystalized fox pee, to scare the squirrels away from the garden. I am excited to use it and I am aghast that I forgot to mention such an exciting acquisition earlier.
14. I HAD ANOTHER GRATUITOUS CHILDHOOD FLASHBACK THAT OSTENSIBLY HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH GREEN: It involves kittens and square dancing.
15. BABYG: Can turn from her back to her side and can grab things.

16. BABYG: Has written a series of poems to the Boob. Percy the cat has written one snide little piece to it, as well.
17. PLASTICS: Woe are we who cannot wean ourselves from plastics.

How To Wash Cloth Diapers at Home

Many of my family and friends are surprised to learn that we wash Lila's dirty diapers at home. In fact, I was skeptical before we tried it. So I have put together this pictorial guide. It's ridiculously easy to wash cloth diapers if your baby is only fed breastmilk and you have your own washer and dryer.

Not everyone has seen what cloth diapers and diaper covers look like. Here's an unfolded "Chinese prefold” beside an empty cover:



You fold the insert and place it in the cover. There are many ways to fold the insert. We fold ours the way you do a letter and that works well for our girl.



The baby wears the diaper and soils it with either urine or breastmilk poo.



Put the soiled insert into a medium sized garbage bin with a washable bag. If the cover is dirty, put that in too. The size of the bin should accommodate about two days worth of diapers.



When you're ready to wash the diapers, empty the bag directly into the washer. That's right! Just dump them in. You do not have to rinse the poo diapers of breastfed babies. Breastmilk poo is 100% water soluble! (Wash the bag with the diapers.)



The diapers really do come out clean.



Put the wet diapers in the dryer. You might need to run your dryer longer than usual. (I'm in Houston where nothing is ever truly dry.)



If you follow these simple steps, you will have accomplished a feat that many people think is disgusting, vile, and beneath them. In case you are wondering, our water and electricity bills have not gone up by a noticeable amount. We use cloth diapers in combination with elimination communication. I highly recommend this combination if you can manage it. You save money, you save environmental resources, and you're more emotionally connected with the baby.

EC Milestones

Today BabyG and I went to a nearby coffee shop, where I wanted to read John Winthrop's Modell of Christian Charity for an hour or so. BabyG slept soundly, and we lucked into a nice table outside, and escaping house was so restful that we ended up staying a few hours. Since she was dozing in her stroller or in my Sweet Pea sling it was easy to keep track of her little potty signs.

The first time she started squirming I ran her to the bathroom. It didn't have a counter, so it took finagling to get her diaper off & discover it wasn't yet soiled or wet. I figured if I went back to the table she would go in a minute or so...so for the first time since we started this EC adventure I held her over a real, big person's toiletbowl (instead of her plastic Bjorn buckets) and said "Psssst" -- and she smiled and peed. About an hour later she peed and pooed in the toilet -- and if you think you're embarrased for me now for all the gushing I've already done about my baby going potty at Brazil's, you would be absolutely mortified to know how proud and excited I was this afternoon when I heard poo shoot into the toilet. I'm guessing BabyG's either the only, or one of the few six weeks olds who has eliminated in the potty at Brazil (the restaurant). To top off the experience: we went to dinner at a restaurant and she continued her foray into the world of eliminating into public toilets with both me and her daddy.

For the record, a year ago I never could have imagined that I'd be holding my baby over a toilet; or that I'd be delighted when she pooed; or that I'd be convinced she waits for me to take her to pee and poo if she can, even at one and a half months old.

But here I am.

But For Lack of a Boob

MaGreen went to work today, only four weeks after giving birth to BabyG. She teaches writing to children at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Normally, MaGreen works three hours twice a week. For now, she has agreed to go just once a week. My employer does not provide paid leave for paternity, but I am taking all my vacation days and I have not yet run out. So I stayed at home with BabyG and took care of her while MaGreen went back to work.

BabyG slept soundly – that is soundlessly – for the first hour and a half. I read twenty pages of a book, put the soiled cloth diapers in the laundry, and picked up around the house. Then BabyG started to fuss, which she usually does before peeing or pooing. I decided to catch her elimination. When my parents and my brother’s family came to visit last week, we stopped practicing elimination communication (EC). I couldn’t focus on BabyG’s signals and it felt awkward holding a bowl under her for several minutes at a time. Everyone vied for time to hold BabyG and EC just wasn’t going to happen. Today though, without any distractions, not even from MaGreen, I was able to catch everything – multiple pees and a two-squirt poo – and I did not have to wait long. I used our new bowl bought from the EC store that allows BabyG to rest her thighs on the curved top.



When BabyG cried for food, I popped a pacifier in her mouth. Then I warmed up breastmilk MaGreen had pumped that morning. When I gave the bottle to BabyG, she drank eagerly and with focus. I had to warm up a second bottle after BabyG drained the first one. I felt quite confident. I can care for BabyG just as well as MaGreen but for my lacking lactating breasts. I feel lucky that we can afford an electric, double breast pump.

I May Be Ten Days Old, But I Wasn’t Born Yesterday

We’ve been parents for ten days, but I feel like we have existed outside of clock time since BabyG was born. I have to look at the calendar to figure out if it is a weekday or weekend. Time has largely become the interval between breastfeeding, poos, pees, and naps. We barely noticed New Years.

We have been fortunate to sleep for hours at a time at night. MaGreen has managed to breastfeed lying down in bed and fall asleep while BabyG suckles. We are not overwhelmed or exhausted. On the contrary, we have enjoyed ourselves. But we are consumed by caring for BabyG. It is all we do.

Each day, we try to learn some new parenting skill. Two days ago, we made the switch to cloth diapers. Yesterday, MaGreen set up her Ameda breastpump. Today we have been trying to use Elimination Communication (EC). So far, we have “caught” the majority her poos and pees in a little bowl (and she’s had a cloth diaper on the rest of the time). I have been amazed by the experience. The claims made by EC proponents about bonding between parent and child that I thought were outlandish have been true for me. Since I don’t have a breast and BabyG’s two activities are eating and eliminating, the EC bonding is what I've got to work with.



Switching to cloth diapers helped us study BabyG’s elimination patterns because we could actually tell if she urinated. That helped us prepare for EC. She pees about seven minutes after ever breastfeeding. She poos after breastfeeding around 10 pm, 4 am, and 7 am plus some other times. I have learned tell the difference between her rooting for MaGreen’s milk, general digestive distress, and straining to eliminate. When I hold over a little bowl and she needs to eliminate, she is quite calm in my arms. It is a tender moment. When BabyG kicks around and whines that means she is done and I know to put her down. I’m shocked that the communication part of Elimination Communication is real. My baby may be ten days old, but she wasn't born yesterday.

Diaper Free: Potty Training Indian Style

Last October, the New York Times published an article called “Dare to Bare” about the growing number of American and European families raising babies without diapers. It was written by an anthropologist named Meredith F. Small. She wrote, “I am ashamed to admit that, even though I've studied how babies are cared for all over the world, it never occurred to me to focus on how children in other cultures use the potty, or not.” Though she’d adopted parenting techniques from Kenya and India like co-sleeping, she kept using diapers and chides herself for it.

When MaGreen read the piece she became interested. If you have been a regular reader of this blog you know that when MaGreen becomes interested in something, she researches it exhaustively. She bought a book by Laurie Boucke called Infant Potty Training. It explains elimination communication (EC) in great detail. The main message is that potty training can be a continuum of communicating and working with the child as she gets older. Infants can communicate the need to eliminate by squirming, grunting, straining, or making sounds. Initially, parents hold the child over a bowl, sink, or toilet. Eventually kids can get to the receptacle but need help disrobing. Ultimately, the child can walk to the potty, disrobe, and eliminate, often much earlier than kids raised on diapers.

I was hesitant. But, you know, my older brother was raised without diapers. And for that matter, I was potty trained in India during a family vacation.

Like Meridith Small, it hadn’t occurred to me that a child could be raised without diapers in America. Despite having Indian parents, living in India, and seeing my own cousins’ kids raised without diapers, I never considered going without diapers for our expected baby girl. When I read the book, I was pleased to find out that Laurie Boucke learned the diaper-free method from an Indian woman. A strange form of pride welled up inside me.

When MaGreen and I started to talk to acquantances about our diaper-free plans, we got lots of comments. “You could hurt the child,” one mother told us at a party. “You know you have to support their heads.” There were rants against the diaper-free method on the feminist listserv I subscribe to on the grounds that it keeps women out of the workforce.

When my parents visited last weekend, I thought they would get upset when we explained our plans, but they were excited. I gave my mom a copy of Laurie Boucke’s book. After a few minutes she laughed and said that she didn’t need to read it. “This is just how it is done in India,” she said.