kim through
   the looking glass

It’s interesting. I never thought I’d ever be thinking this ‘radically’.

With my recent research into home-schooling/unschooling and the ideas floating in my mind and beliefs forming about trusting our kids more completely, we’ve come up against something:

Sleep.

When did I make the shift from fully trusting in Gwen’s newborn sleep intuition to trying to dictate when and where she sleeps? Does this even make sense? Does anyone tell me when to sleep?

When Gwen was first born, I trusted her to sleep when she was tired and wake when she was rested - or, more often than not, hungry! I also trusted her to sleep where she felt safe, which generally meant in my or Brad’s arms. We brought her to bed when we went to bed and she slept snuggled up beside me all night.

It flowed so naturally. There were no struggles - except when she was fighting sleep and wouldn’t give in. But even then it was her struggling with herself, not with us. Read the rest of this entry »

Wow, that title seems odd.

While I’ve been witness to a few of Gil’s pees and have been able to make the cue sound (’pssssssss’), I’ve never purposefully caught one.

Until just now.

I’ve read everywhere about how you’re most likely to catch a pee just after a nap, since babies tend not to want to soil their sleeping area.

Makes sense to me - what other animals encourage their young to do so?

So as Gil was waking from his long afternoon nap (12-2:45PM today!), I removed his (dry!) diaper to nurse him and observe his cues. He nursed a long while on the first side with no sign of a pee and then pulled off, arched his back and straightened his legs. I held him in the basic under-thigh hold over our potty insert.

And he peed!

I made the cueing sound as he peed and aimed the stream a bit and he finished. I offered again after the second time, thinking he might have to poop, but he didn’t.

Yay for our first Natural Infant Hygiene success!

***UPDATE***

Just after I hit ‘post’, Gil came off the second side doing some fussing and leg stretching. So I figured, ‘what the heck!’ and took him over to the potty. Took off the (still dry!) diaper and held him over it in position - immediate pee! I was so taken aback I didn’t manage to cue him until pretty well after he finished. He was still a bit squirmy, so I said, “Do you need to poop?” and made a grunting sound, being sure to flex my abs. And my little man pooped! Wow. I can’t believe this crazy stuff works

I just can’t get over her great humour … check out Mama Is’ Wasting My Life in Conversation:

I was recommended the book Diaper Free: The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene (Ingrid Bauer) by a number of parents on an email list in which I participate. At first the idea of Natural Infant Hygiene (NIH), or Elimincation Communication (EC) as it is often called, totally grossed me out - after all, aren’t babies and diapers part and parcel?

I figured it couldn’t hurt to read the book and maybe it would give me some interesting things to try with Gwen, so I picked it up from my library and dove into it. People, I love this book!

The idea behind NIH is that babies are born with the ability to consciously relax their bodies and urinate or defecate just like an older child or adult, but that we train them to use a diaper instead. From pages 98-99:

“Elimination Communication begins with the baby’s awareness of subtle sensations, which indicate the filling of the bladder. The baby may then signal the parent, or the parent may anticipate the need through timing or intuition. The parent holds the child over a receptacle and make a familiar sound. The child then voluntarily relaxes and releases the urine before the bladder has become uncomfortably full. Over time, as muscles strengthen and conscious control increases, the baby is able to retain and hold in larger quantities of urine for longer periods of time if necessary. This occurs gradually with no particular focus or effort as a natural and inevitable consequence. About the time the sphincter muscles fully develop, the diaper-free baby achieves consistent continence.”

Bauer then goes on to contrast this with conventional potty training, in which a child has learned to pee in its diaper only when the bladder is very full and it cannot hold any more urine. When we then ask that child to begin using a toilet or potty to urinate in, he or she must contract the sphincter muscles and make it to the potty or toilet to release the urine. These kids just literally don’t sense the subtler signals that their bladder is sending to their brain in order to pee voluntarily before the bladder is full until much later than the toilet learning has begun.

I think one of the most interesting things I learned in this book is about the differences between the Western world’s concept of ‘toilet readiness’ - that a child cannot possibly toilet train before at least 18 months because they don’t have the ability - and the Eastern world’s belief that children are quite able to communicate effectively about their elimination needs. I enjoyed this quote a whole lot - from pages 70-71:

“One of the most glaring problems with the concept of toilet training readiness is its heavy ethnocentric focus. The “readiness” theory can only even begin to be considered viable if one pretends that the vast majority of the non-Western world does not exist … Millions of mothers around the globe know that babies are “ready” and aware from birth. The empirical evidence is overwhelming and stretches back for eons. Why has the experience of the majority of the world’s mothers and babies been ignored for so long? Are only modern North American and European babies subject to this maturational lag?”

The book then describes the suspicious timing of the release of scientific literature to promote the ‘toilet readiness’ theory by Dr. Brazelton during the year the first disposable diapers - Pampers - were released. Not to mention that Dr. Brazelton happened to sit for a time on the Pampers Parenting Institute Pediatric Roundtable. Coincidence? I happen to think not!

The book is filled with stories and instructions as to how best support your child’s elimination - whether you start at birth, after a few months, or start later with a toddler. I’m planning to start pretty early with Love Bug - we’ll see how it goes!

Here are some other resources for learning about NIH:

• borntopotty.com
• diaperfreebaby.org
• tribalbaby.org - Learn about Elimination Communication
• Free to EC! My Journey to Elimination Communication

Not only am a blog-slacker, I’m also a Christmas decorating slacker!!

To be honest, I have a lot of questions about Christmas-y-ness that always gets me confused around the holidays. How do we hype up Christmas but keep it as a celebration of Jesus’ birth? Can we keep the focus on Jesus and still give gifts?

They’re some big questions, and I know that I won’t figure out their answers any time soon. I do know, though, that in order for a holiday (the short form of ‘Holy Day’) to be special, you do need to do things differently than every other day of the year. When I look at the way the Jewish people celebrate their Holy Days, it gives me some ideas on how Jesus (a Jew) would have celebrated a day like Christmas.

There would definitely have been preparations, there would be decorations, there would be celebrations with church and family - food, music, wine, togetherness! That’s the kind of Christmas I can get excited about.

Today, Brad and I are going to buy our first Christmas tree as a couple. Now that we have a house (with high, high ceilings!) it feels right. I’m excited to discover and create traditions that will have Gwen excited about Christmas in the coming years. I just hope (and pray) that we can make traditions that keep the focus on Jesus.