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from Natural Life Magazine,
September/October, 2009 When I first became pregnant over ten years ago, I read everything I could about attachment parenting and how other cultures care for their infants. One of the first books I read was The Continuum Concept by Jean Leidloff. In this book, I read accounts of how women in non-Western countries deal with the elimination needs of their infants. Parents from countries including India, China, Kenya, Guatemala and some Inuit in northern Canada carry their babies naked from birth, in slings. This closeness and intimacy allows the parents to feel and to be aware of their infants’ need to eliminate. Then they simply take them out when the need arises and hold them over a receptacle or, more commonly, into nearby bushes. In North America, this is alternately called Elimination Communication (EC), Infant Potty Training (IPT), Natural Infant Hygiene (NIH) or simply, Diaper-Free.
I am embarrassed to say that as an environmentally aware person, I did not realize that there was an alternative to the large ecological footprint that comes from any diapering method. Just think of the impact of parents changing diapers an average of sixty times each week for three-and-a-half years (or two hundred and fifty weeks) and even more often during the early weeks. When I found out I was pregnant with my third child and I contemplated caring for two children under the age of two, I became more receptive to the idea of an alternative to the time-consuming drudgery of changing and laundering more than twenty dirty diapers a day. I wondered – in spite of my exposure, through literature, to the stories of parents from all over the world who easily and hygienically care for their children without the use of diapers . . . To read the rest of this article, subscribe to Natural Life's online edition. Rashel Tremblay is a single mother to three children, ages nine, four and two-and-a-half. They spend their time life learning and growing food on the shores on Lake Erie. |
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