Ello ello (just continuing the aliteration hehe)

I am just feeling a little bit blissful about our nappy free baby today. Maybe it is a delayed response to a midwife who weighed Ramona this afternoon who was so baffled by our nappyfree 8 month old that she just kept going on and on about how she was the cleverest baby she has ever met, during which I felt quite awkward and judgemental with my unconditional loving and non rewardy self, but maybe this contentedness is my deeply ingrained desire for praise self rearing it’s satisfied head. Ha.

But maaaaybe it is just the best thing I have done with my LO, along with breastfeeding and babywearing, and I am just suddenly thinking: why doesn;t everyone do it? Especially green/attachment/natural parents?

To be honest, when I first heard about it I thought it was totally crackers. And I genuinely only started doing it because I thought “If my job now is motherhood, and all I do all day is mother, I might as well fill my day up with something other than breastfeeding- ahh, holding my baby over the toilet saying PSSSST will do”. But within a few days I realised that this totally worked, that she loved going outside of a nappy.

And now the reasons why I love it are ten fold:
It is a continuation of me meeting her needs, when I feel she is hungry, I feed her, when I feel she needs to wee, I help her.
I love the communication- her wriggling, eyeballing me, grunting when she needs to go.
The sense of connection when we are so in sync.
We immediately went down from one laundry wash of nappies a day to one a week.
I never have to clean poo up, ever.
I love seeing her freedom of movement without a nappy, I love her lolling around naked on warm days.
My husband has been able to get hugely involved in this side of parenting.
When I go out I don’t need a big fat nappy bag. Just a spare pair of leggings for a miss!

Of course, there is another side- some days we have wee all over the floor, and some days we are quite out of sync, and I have no expectation that she will be totally potty trained before others. (Although today we did only have one tiny wee out of a potty and all other buisness inside.) But even breastfeeding has its dark side- Ramona has teeth now- the pain!!!!

But still, I do wonder, why don’t more people do it?

Hehehe, I did warn you that it was evangelical!

x x x x

Lulupop - 21 July 2011 09:59 PM

why doesn;t everyone do it? Especially green/attachment/natural parents?

Hey Lulupop,

firstly congratulations on the mama-baby synchronicity, go YOU! In response to your question, for me personally I don’t have the confidence in my own ability to “read” Roo sufficiently frequently enough to get it right (stupid baby brain and short term memory!). With that in mind (whilst I think it’s a really lovely thing to be able to do), having at best a pretty chaotic house with little space, a 6 year old and 3 cats, I rarely get around to cleaning out all the nappies much more than once a day, let alone if I were to have several “accidents” over the course of the day, I just don’t think I’d have the time (nor currently the energy) to spend half the day cleaning another stain out of my (already pretty stained) carpet.

If I were to have my children over again and I was aware of EC then I might have given it a go with my first when I had more time and space though.

Lovely post to read Lulupop.  You should feel good about it - you had the confidence to give it a go and stick with it. 
I didn’t do EC because I didn’t know anything about it until I came here and my lo was older by then.
xxx

Having done it with Fliss, I think that lots of people (who know about it!) don’t do it for a few reasons. It isn’t socially acceptable to pee your baby in the street here the funny looks I got!), some people see it as ‘too early to train’ (obviously they have got the wrong end of the stick!), and when it isn’t working so well, it is a pain in the arse!

Saying that, Fliss was totally reliable with my help at 11 months and doing it by herself by 18mths…that is a LOT of nappies I haven’t had to wash! I never really felt all fluffy about it, Chris was always better at it than me. I guess what I really love about it is the connection it gave Fliss and Chris, so we’ll be doing it again this time round, but I probably will use back up nappies more!

Clarexxx

I was quite intrigued this time around but our life situation didn’t allow for it and I didn’t know about it with my other two babies. I felt rubbish about it but I don’t think anyone could do it with a manic toddler and a child at school 15 miles away which meant spending 2 hours in the car with the newborn from 2 weeks old. Our situation was rubbish and stressful and horrible until dd2 was six months old when we were finally able to move so I couldn’t have done it. However, I do think we have great connection and I usually know when she’s ‘going’ so I change her straightaway - unless ds is jumping up and down on the cat or pouring water over the carpet or piano at that exact moment… and she does have lots of nappy free time (in which she likes to stay dry) and we only do two nappy washes a week including ds’s night nappies so it’s no hassle at all.

So yes, I think it’s great if life is the way it should be with your first (or others if you have two parents at home, maybe?) and you have lots of time and trust in your abilities to parent - but I don’t think the early days are necessarily that blissful in many cases so it can be very overwhelming and also, a lot of people just haven’t heard of it!

Claire xx

Lovely you’ve had such a positive experience!

I couldn’t do it though, I have a 2 year old, and I can imagine I would miss more than a few of the signs, or Ru would end up playing in it! :D x

Lovely to hear of your success. Maybe if I’d known about it with my first but having 3 under 5 when Amber was born, and home educating, I don’t think I could have done it.

Beck xxxxxxxxxxxx

It’s great that your enjoying it, my reasons for not doing it are as follows;

-I have loads going on, this certainly wouldn’t be anywhere near the top of priority list
-My husband would totally freak out at *accidents* happening regularly (and I wouldn’t be thrilled either, my cream carpet could already tell you a few stories, lol)
- In honesty I don’t think I would feel more attached to my child for doing it.

Hmmm yeah I can so see that starting out with EC once you have other rampaging toddlers would get tricky!!!!

I reckon there’s loads of myths around it though, most of which I thought until I tried it, ie, that you have to be some sort of super in tune mum to pull it off - so not true- for the first few months most people go by timing until after a while when the cueing starts paying off and LOs are more able to communicate back.
Also, that it is much harder work. I am THE laziest mum! My house is mayhem but EC is less, or on a par, with nappy changing. In 6 months ( I only began when Ramona was 3 months old) I have only had one poo on the floor, and wee is sterile so I just chuck a nappy soaker on it to soak up any misses. Also, alot of people don’t actually have the nappy off- they have it on for back up, I guess you’d only go completely nappy free if you had some reliability.

Dont get me wrong, I am sooooo not going into combat at all, saying you should have done it. I think you are all incredible mothers on here and I admire all of you. I don’t post a whole lot but read loads and I am constantly inspired and challenged by the awesome decisions you are making and the way you parent and just love your children.

I just thought it would be good, just for any pregnant ladies, to do a bit of myth debunking and to say- go on, why not try it and see?

I agree and I hope my post didn’t sound too defensive - I’ve been to two groups lately where the topic of EC has been brought up by very smug women and i was worried after i posted that I’d been replying to them and not you as your post was so genuine, open and lovely! I think it can scare a lot of people off as it sounds so radical - I love the way you’ve described it and i do often throw it into conversation just so people know it’s out there as an option - like lotus birth, which I guess i’m evangelical about in my own way, lol

Claire xx

I first heard about EC when I was pregnant with DD, was very interested in it, but thought it would be too much work in practice. For some reason I thought you had to EC fulltime, go nappyfree all the time etc. The funny thing was ECing DD would have been so much less work in reality, as I always changed her nappy after every wee/poo-all those nappy changes and washing LOL
Then I forgot about it til DD was a young toddler, and I met a woman that was doing EC IRL with her baby. Asked loads of q’s and started to EC DD. It went great for poo’s til she was 2yrs old and she got food poisoning. All those bouts of diarrhoea put her off going to the toilet to do a poo, but shortly after she started doing wee’s on the toilet.

With DS I EC’d from newborn, used nappies as a backup. And it went great til he started to ge more active around 4mths. Then his signs changed and I couldn’t keep up. Maybe if I had just had him I might have adjusted quicker, but having DD too I found it really challenging. Eventually he started to refuse. So we kinda stopped, well daytime ECing, nighttime EC was fine.
I’m due to have bubs no.3 soon and will be ECing pretty much from birth I think this time.

isnt it wonderful to have such a connection with your baby. i ec’d with no.3 at home when i could.
although i dont think i will do it this time. again its the time thing here, with 4 home ed kids whilest the baby is tiny and not moving i want to be able to spend more time with the older ones doing the things they want to do. i am not sure yet how i will fit in trips to the toilet with this 1 too. i also work from home so being able to take a baby to the toilet without much notice will be hard for me.