After learning about it on the Web, Catherine started her diaper-free journey with our 5-month-old Darius in mid-December 2008, using a not-so-well-known method (at least in Singapore) called ‘Elimination Communication’, or EC in short.

With some doubts and uncertainty, I joined in the ‘fun’ some time later, routinely ‘pestering’ Darius to pee and poo with verbal keywords like ‘shhh’ and ‘ugggh’ respectively.

Initially, Darius had no idea what we wanted and was always complaining and crying whenever we placed him above the sink or on the potty. His crying was so bad at some point of time that I became guilty and was wondering if we were tormenting him instead. -_-|

Fortunately we persevered and he began to get our cues, giving us much satisfaction whenever we successfully convinced him to pee or poo into the potty. The focus of EC should not be on the number of ‘hits’ or ‘misses’, but on the journey of successfully communicating with our child, and it is this latter which is giving us the satisfaction.

Recently, Catherine borrowed a book titled ‘The Diaper Free Baby‘ from the National Library, and since picking up the book to read, I’ve learnt to be more appreciative about EC and is glad to have embarked on this journey with Darius.

Babies are born with the instinct of eliminating their wastes without diapers wrapped around their privates, which explains why it’s common to get sprayed by the ’golden showers’ from our newborns while we were taking off their diapers during diaper changes. Unfortunately, we parents often unknowingly cause them to lose this instinct, and they were thus ’trained’ to eliminate their wastes in the diapers the unnatural way. This is proven by the less and less accidental sprays that we encounter as the child begins to get accustomed to the diapers.

Though nobody is in a position to say what is right or wrong, but once Catherine and I become aware of the concepts of EC, it’s difficult for us to go back to our non-EC times as we can’t help but feel uneasy making our child pee or poo in his diapers again, knowing that he actually has the potential to control his urges and release them on our cues.

Catherine has documented our diaper-free journey here and we were glad things turned out well as Darius has become more responsive to our cues than when we first started out our EC program with him. We are not trying to hard-sell this EC method to parents out there, but to introduce its concept and to allow more people to be aware of the existence of EC while we share our personal experiences.

On the econmical sense, that means less money spent on disposable diapers (and erm… save the environment, of course). Woot! ^^|

Meanwhile, we will be continuing our fascination of ‘admiring’ Darius’ private part and smile in delight everytime he flashes his ‘golden showers’ on our cues.

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