On Diapering...

Before Tye was born, I bought gear for cloth diapering- 24 Indian prefolds, 5 Swaddlebees diapers, 9 waterproof covers, and 4 Snappis. Then, when Tye was born, we used the Swaddlebees along with disposables. When I tried a prefold on her, the diaper was bigger than she was, and the covers didn't close around her skinny little legs! I tried again several weeks later, but the leaking around Tye's tiny legs was ridiculous. This week, I tried again- and we're still going! Since we returned from Texas, Tye has been in cloth diapers with the exception of trips to the pediatrician (that's a whole other post...) and running errands, when she wore disposables. I like the cloth diapers so far! The best part? Tye actually lets me know when she's wet, something she never did in disposables. Like older students I've taught, she must have been comfortable enough in her wet disposables to not complain. They do too good a job absorbing.

The reason I want Tye to let me know when she's wet is because I want to learn to pick up on her signals that she's about to go. In an ideal world, I would love to go diaper-free with her, something many people are able to accomplish. It's called Elimination Communication, or EC. The idea is that caregivers can listen to a child's cues that she needs to eliminate, much like she gives cues that she is hungry or tired, and in the same way, attend to her needs to go by allowing her to eliminate in an appropriate location. It sounds far out to many people, and yet it works for many parents. More than just intrigued, I bought Ingrid Bauer's book Diaper Free!, though I haven't gotten through much of it yet. Today, Tye and I went to Babies'R'Us and purchased a potty chair and a tiny bamboo toilet seat. I'm not sure which we'll use, but we'll use both for potty training later if, for some reason, ECing doesn't work out. But I really hope that it does. ECing would make life easier in so many ways... And the debate on the environmental effects of cloth versus disposable is won over by option of using fewer, or possibly even no, diapers. Wouldn't that be amazing?

Apparently my grandmother had all 3 of her daughters toilet trained by the time they were a year old. While my mom jokes that really, they had her trained, I think she was on to something great. If only she had written a book on it back then!