What is Elimination Communication?

This is how my husband put it in an email to friends and family when our daughter was a few weeks old: "Diaper Free!!! She tells us when she needs to poop Two years before giving birth to my first child I met a family at a local park for a job interview. They were in search of a nanny, and I was interested in working for them. They had a four-year-old boy and twin six-month-old boys. During the course of our conversation the boys' mother looked down at her nursing baby, said "Already? Okay," got out a Tupperware container, removed the lid, held her naked-bottomed son over it, and waited patiently as he pooped into it. "Ummmmm," I said, "What was that?" My introduction to Elimination Communication, often referred to as EC, is what it was.

Where We Are Now

As of this writing, it has been ten months that my family and I have been practicing EC. During this time we have employed different methods and tools, talked to many other parents about the practice, and I have even taught a class on the subject to members of the Mother's Support Network. I'd love to share with you what we have experienced so far.

First of all, as for the "Diaper Free" thing, this has not been how it panned out for our family, or for any of the other families we know. We all practice EC daily (and when they're really little, hourly!), but we also use cloth diapers. Using cloth diapers and practicing EC seem to go hand-in-hand, as both are choices that seem to be commonly made by those on a "natural" or "conscious" or attachment parenting path. But there is another reason the two fit together. Cloth diapers are generally not as absorbent as disposable, so baby knows when the diaper has been soiled and wants to get out of it. Over time, they realize that they'd rather not soil their diaper at all and, because they have been practicing EC, choose instead to communicate to their caregiver that it's time to sit on the potty.