Diaper Free?

I realize that most of my posts have centered around the new addition to our family. I'm not really good about scrapbooking, putting together a photo album, or even a baby book (which I would still like to do). So, I'm using my blog to document the different milestones in his life for something to look back on one day. So please bare with me...I don't expect everyone to read these long posts
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My husband and I recently decided to try Elimination Communication.

I bought a book called The Diaper Free Baby. I purchased this book after hearing about it from my husband. He heard something on the radio about it. Then, a church friend started doing it with her little girl. Amazed that a 9 month was using the toilet 80% of the time, I was intrigued.

"As Christine Gross-Loh reveals in her progressive, enlightening book...infants are born with the ability to communicate their need to "go," just as they communicate hunger or sleepiness."

Now, I was thinking just as you are now. A baby with no diaper? That seems pretty messy! But diaper-free doesn't mean diaper-less. It's all about listening to your baby's cues of when they need to go. The book talks about how babies are not born with desire to sit in there own waste. This makes perfect sense to me, because I've always hated the idea of my baby sitting in his dirty diaper. I change him as often as possible.

The U.S. average for potty training is 3 years! I just can't imagine changing diapers for 3 years! This book is not about trying to get your baby potty trained as early as possible. It's a book about being in-tune with your baby and listening to your baby's cues, just as you do with other things...sleeping, eating, etc., but it seems that most parents who practice EC have their babies potty trained at around one years of age. Did you know that 50% of the world's children are "potty trained" by one year's old? I didn't.

I love how the book puts no pressure to do EC full time. If you do it part-time or even occasional and it can be beneficial. This is where I am at with it. For the past week or so, we've been doing it occasional to part-time. I was very skeptical at first, but figured what could be the harm in just trying it out? We mostly catch his bowl movements because they are the easiest. Whenever we see G working on a bowl movement, we hold him over the toilet and he "goes." It's kind of exciting actually. Less messy diapers to clean and diaper rashes are pretty much an non-issue.

I'm also making my own version of these cute babylegs to make this whole process easier. We'll see how it goes. So far, so good.

3 Months

Gideon is 3 Months old already! What a big boy. He's 2 feet long now and over 17lbs. He's so much more vocal and plays with us a lot. He loves to be "rough housed" by his dad. He has a lot of control over his neck and is one strong baby. We just love him so much!

Our little boy!

Chubby!

3 Years

My husband and I have been married for 3 years yesterday. Wow, have the past few years flown by. We enjoyed the evening with an early dinner at our favorite Italian restaurante, Biaggi's. We haven't been there since our anniversary last year. It was delicious! We also brought the baby along with us (he's just too little and too unpredictable for us leave him with a sitter yet). He was so good for us. I fed him right before we left and slept on the way there and until we were served our entres. The rest of the time he spent exploring the new surroundings from his car seat. My husband and I were able to talk about things other than work and G's poop and really enjoyed the time out.