In my travels through the developing world, I was surprised many times to see small babies without diapers. In many parts of Asia and Africa, I saw bare-bottomed babies crawling about or tied in a sling on the hip of their mother or older sister.
In Tibet all the babies and toddlers were also without diapers, but due to the cold climate they still needed pants on; their pants all had a slit in the seat, which would pull open whenever they squatted or bent over, the result being that children too small to get their pants on and off could do their business without soiling their clothes.
At first, I wrote it off as people who were just too poor to afford diapers, but when I saw that even families who could afford diapers were still using this system, and that it was quite universal in more 'primitive' parts of the world, I figured that it must be a cultural thing, a relic from times when diapers and cloth for diapers was unavailable. Surely when they learned about modern hygiene they would abandon their practices in favour of proper diapering?
However, after a while, I realised that these mothers never had a problem with accidents, and the children were all clean and healthy. Not only that, the children were generally completely "toilet trained" around the age of twelve to eighteen months, without any "training" as we think of it in the West.
With my own daughter, Sequoia, I knew that I didn't want to use disposable diapers, feeling uncertain about using something with highly toxic chemicals on my daughter's bottom, not to mention all the non-biodegradable waste choking our landfills. So we started out with a pile of old-fashioned flat cotton squares which I folded into diaper shapes and held with diaper pins and water-proof covers; just like my grandmother had done.
Since we lived very close to nature, in a warm climate, Sequoia spent a lot of time bare-bottomed, lying on a diaper in case of accidents. I soon found that if she was wrapped up in her diapers for long times, she would get a rash, so we spent a lot of time with the diapers off. As we got to know each other better, I generally knew when Sequoia needed to pee, and would change her promptly.
Eventually, at the insistence of Sequoia's grandmother, we started to experiment with disposable diapers. Of course we quickly found out that the disposables made the rashes worse.
We quickly dropped the disposable experiment as a lesson learned and went back to cloth, which worked much better, and created less pollution. I read into diapering and potty training, and was shocked to find out that most doctors today recommend parents wait till a child is two and a half or even three years old before starting to introduce toilet training, and most parents had great problems with it, with many exasperated as their four-year-olds were still clinging on to their "pull-ups."
In older books, I discovered that before the advent of disposable diapers, average toilet training ages were equivalent to that in the third world; around twelve to eighteen months, while in the West, where the vast majority of mothers put disposables on their babies from birth onwards, and never let them go bare-bottomed, the average age had crept up to almost three years old!
I couldn't believe it was possible that human physiology had changed so much in just forty years, and yet doctors today were advising that most children do not develop the ability to control their elimination until 30 - 36 months; double the age of children who can and do develop bodily control in under-developed areas. Quickly, the relation between the ages of toilet-independence and the use of disposable or cloth diapers became apparent.
I first heard about the Western concept of Elimination Communication (EC), a method of raising babies without diapers, when Sequoia was a few months old. The practice is simple, and is really all about communication rather than trying to "toilet train" an infant.
In general, parents begin with EC when the baby is around three months old, but many begin from birth or from much older. It all depends on the family and what works for them, of course, the earlier EC is begun, the easier it is to learn to follow the baby's cues and the easier for the baby to communicate.
The parent can utilize a variety of methods to build communication and increase the infant's awareness of their bodily functions. The first, most basic method is Timing. New parents can easily observe their infant to notice how often they need to eliminate. Newborns generally urinate every 10 - 20 minutes, after breastfeeding or drinking and after waking.
Parents also need to pay close attention to their infant's signals; the ways that babies let their parents know that they need to go. These signals can vary widely between babies, but caregivers can easily learn their child's particular gestures. Common signals include certain facial gestures, sudden fussing or squirming, or detaching and re-latching while nursing. While some babies make clear signals from the very beginning, others may display more subtle signaling, but once the caregivers observe their infant, the practice becomes easy.
Some families start EC from birth while others begin a little later, some will practice EC for only an hour or so each day, while others will do it full time; every family must find the method that works for them, but all parents will find benefit in trying EC to some extent.
EC is about communicating with the child, and helping the child to become aware of her body, rather than letting her ignore her bodily functions and then need to clean up after the fact, and finally, having to "train" her to control herself, often using shame and guilt, later in childhood.
I believe this is the gentlest way of raising a child, with love, respect and dignity, and it works to form a stronger bond between parent and child. Obviously, EC works best when the family is also co-sleeping, breastfeeding and practicing baby-wearing, but anyone can use the principles of EC as little or as much as they need.