ADVENTURES IN CLOTH DIAPERING.

When I call Hannah to check in, she tells me Further has pooped all over her, all over the couch, all over the bed, all over the floor––she's laughing while she tells me this, thankfully––and that she has started taking pictures because she doesn't know what else to do. (Don't worry, we'll spare you those photos). This was our first week cloth diapering and first week trying Elimination Communication. And it was a doozy.For the uninitiated, Elimination Communication, or EC, is a form of potty training. Babies often give clues as to when they're going to pee or poop––wiggling, stiffening up, it's different for every baby. And if you can learn to identify these clues you can habituate your baby to a sound (the hissing sound of peeing, for instance), and they will learn to identify that sound with going to the bathroom. Eventually, they will begin to hold it until you give them a place to go and the trigger sound. The end goal is that your infant will be able to use the toilet (with your help of course) and use less diapers. It makes sense when you really think about it - babies don't want to poop and pee inside their diapers. This is why they wriggle and squirm. But we train them to basically sit in their own waste, and then when they are older, we suddenly try to train them NOT to go in their diapers. Elimination Communication is a natural way of skipping that whole process and letting the baby communicate his needs with you from the beginning.But it's ambitious and it takes a lot of work. We've really only successfully got him to go in his little bucket twice. And once in the bath, but I'm not sure that counts. His favorite thing (besides staring at the ceiling) is to pee as soon as you put the diaper back on, which is lots of fun when you are having to hand wash them all. That is the point of the cloth diapers, though––so that you can tell as soon as he goes, and to encourage you to keep trying EC so as not to have to constantly wash diapers. Even still, it's a challenge.We're staying positive, though. Disposable diapers are just too wasteful for us, and EC just makes too much sense. It's a very old, very tried and true practice and one we're going to try and conquer. By God.- Jesse.