Stories of mother

I am a mom with experience in washable nappies (which I imported from England at the time…) and Elimination Communication. All very successful.

This topic is close to my heart: my Giovanni’s prefold diapers with waterproof panty are neatly placed in a box waiting for the next baby… I offered to borrow them every chance I had, but I didn’t find moms enough “daring” to try. Yet, in our house there was simply never the smell of urine fermented in plastic that in all the other houses signals the presence of a child 0/3, and all our effort (shared by the dad), consisted in an extra load in the washing machine every 3 days.

We put washable nappies on Giovanni the day after we came home with him, just adopted: he was 7 months old! At 9 months we started to propose the EC to him, often leaving him uncovered so that he could see and connect the stimuli he felt with his “products”. I also proposed to him various ways of communicating needs, until he found his: he did not know how to speak yet… he made me “pss!”. I observed it a lot, I talked to him as always too much, I collected many puddles, I often lost my patience and I said “noooo…!”. Sometimes he called me to say “mama, nooo”, and then he dumped it, as if to say he didn’t have time to tell me before… Could I get angry?

My baby had no infection; we had to put the disposable at night because, being a child who slept quietly 12 hours, in the morning he was excessively wet and irritated. They told me all sorts of things, even that I did not have to change it immediately as soon as I realized that he had done his needs, because otherwise he would not learn to withstand the wet and would do whims (!!!). Instead, since he immediately understood that it bothered him, I did not have trouble getting used to report me when he had to go, so at 10 months he pooped in the potty, and at 16, if accompanied occasionally in the bathroom, he could stay all day without a nappy. He entered the kindergarten at that age, and, thanks to the willingness to share the “experiment” with the educators, he never put it back even for the afternoon nap. I put him in the washable nappies at night mostly as a precaution and to keep his tummy warm, since he only peed in bed when I didn’t put it on. That’s up to 24 months, then… complete freedom!

It is not true that you can not go out, if you make this choice. We have travelled a lot: sea, mountain, weekend out, bike, camping, north Europe even with snow… Where we had the washing machine, we used washables nappies; during walks and trips by train or plane we asked for the toilet, using potty training pants, so we did not need the changing table. Unfortunately that model was “disposable”, but it almost always came home dry and we could still use it for another excursion.

It’s also not true that, if you can’t always keep it without a nappy, then the baby gets used to pee on his again: just explain him what happens, that now we have to put it because we will not have a toilet available for a long time, so it’s okay if he does it in the nappy, there are no alternatives. Of course you have to be consistent and remember to warn him when we can take it off, inviting him to tell us when he needs the bathroom. Of course it’s not the case to be “Taliban”: my son, who is one of those who take a while to “warm up”, screamed like an eagle if I took him to the bathroom when he woke up, so never mind, even if he woke up dry I had to let it get wet…

I have to say, though, that I always took care of him, staying home on maternity leave. The grandmothers, who kept him occasionally for a few hours, respected our choice and changed him with the washables nappies I brought along. They sew some waterproof fabric bags to bring home wet nappies, and I brought potties in all the houses that could accommodate him, even in camping!

Several people were puzzled because I often took Giovanni to pee and left him naked at sea, but I was more perplexed to see their children crawling on the beach in a nappy full of pee and sand, with that heat, not to mention the smell of poop + plastic, with which many parents afflict their children and those around them, as if it was an inevitable tribute to early childhood… I think I have learned to better understand his needs, and he to communicate them to me, thanks to this approach that does not want to plug and hide, but to educate mother and son to know each other.

Daniela