Category Archives: Green Ideas

Psst, psst: Thoughts on EC so far

Commenting on Kath’s EC post on Baby KERF helped me reflect more on our elimination communication (EC) journey thus far.*  If you like the “journey” metaphor, I will say that, after nine months of this journey, most days it feels like we’re still trying to pull out of the garage.  There have been a few periods where we made it part way down the driveway, maybe even out into the street, but then we remembered we forgot something and had to go back to the house.

While I’m trying to be patient, and understanding, and optimistic, I fall short much of the time.  Despite all my best intentions to be realistic and not set my expectations too high, especially once he started daycare (where they refuse to sit him on his potty), it’s hard.

So, given my experience thus far, what would I do differently?

  • Wait to start EC until baby is about 6 weeks (or more?), instead of from birth, which is when many cultures that have retained this practice start.
    • During those first weeks, you can watch your baby for elimination signals and try to get a sense of his timing and patterns, but, especially if you’re a first-time mom, you’re dealing with enough other [non-literal] shit.
  • As with any other baby-advice/parenting book, don’t expect YOUR child to match the description of “most other children” — you will just be frustrated.
  • Sleep is more important than diaper-free!  Practice EC during the daytime ONLY.  My initial zeal for trying to catch Every.  Single. Pee. probably contributed to some sleeping problems for bébé.
    • Instead of observing The Pause (a la French parents) when he gave a little cry at night or during nap times, we would rush right in, un-diaper him, and set him on the pot.  Not only were these efforts usually unproductive, but they deprived him of the chance to learn to consolidate his sleep and get the rest he needed.

The anecdotes in the EC books bias one toward thinking the practice is easy and straightforward — if you build it, they will come, and all that jazz.

And maybe it works that way for some people, but when it didn’t for us, it just created one more frustration, one more reason to question my parenting decisions and abilities, at a time that was already stressful and fraught with uncertainty, all fueled of course by sleep deprivation and my struggles with PPD.

I really, really like the idea of EC and I really want it to work.  Most of it makes sense to me in theory, but in practice things just don’t fall into place.  Is it because we’re only part time and the daycare situation?  Because we have yet to go “cold turkey” and ditch the diapers, as some suggest?

Either way, I’m not quite ready to give up — maybe we’re just days from a developmental milestone and a big breakthrough, but I think it’s important to share a perspective that differs from that in most EC literature.

*If you’re new to the blog, you can read more about our EC journey in the “Psst, psst” series:

Making crackers

As you may have noticed, we make many items from scratch and buy very little processed food.  However, crackers are an exception to that general practice.  We don’t eat all that many crackers, probably in part because they ARE processed and involve a good bit of packaging waste.

Once a baby entered the picture, crackers went on my mental “things I could make from scratch, but since I’m not in the habit of doing so, and life is now crazy, I probably never will” list, along with making soy milk and a few other things that I don’t remember right now.

A few weeks ago, Matthew printed out this recipe for homemade crackers.  I set it aside, assuming nothing would come of it.  Shortly thereafter, he took a turn staying home with our sick little Sir.

When I returned home from work that day, I found a fresh batch of homemade crackers.  (In case making crackers and prepping dinner while caring for a sick baby weren’t enough, he also made homemade croissants, ensuring that I would look like a complete slacker on my days home with the baby — just sayin’).

Anyhow, I tried my hand at the crackers over the weekend, giving them a multigrain twist, and making a double batch, because we noticed that a single batch disappeared very quickly.  Continue reading “Making crackers”

Too crunchy?

If you use the term “crunchy” to describe someone, you’re probably referring to a preference for a natural lifestyle, someone who, of course, must eat [homemade] granola, because that is what crunchy people eat.

However, shortly after we started cloth diapering, I developed my own theory for the origin of the term.  “Crunchy” is an apt description for our line-dried diapers.

We don’t have a dryer, so we’ve exclusively line-dried our laundry for the past few years.  Sometimes I notice that the clean, dry clothes are a bit stiff, but it’s not a big deal.  However, some of the diapers we use end up EXTREMELY stiff and rough, which IS a big deal for The Dude’s sensitive baby skin (and these would probably irritate most anyone’s skin, baby or no).

Fortunately, we have access to our downstairs neighbors’ dryer, so, although I don’t like the energy use (or the fact that the diapers will wear out more quickly — “lint” is mostly just fabric particles from your clothes), I’ve started using it to help soften up the cloth diapers.  When possible, I line dry the diapers most of the way, then toss them in the dryer for a softening fluff.

While this solves the crunchiness problem, the homemade, hand-me-down portion of our diaper collection still have rough edges, which are causing ongoing irritation issues for The Dude.  He’s almost outgrown many of those anyway, so I’m faced with buying more cloth diapers.

I’ll admit that I’ve been procrastinating — hoping, based on what I’ve read about people who’ve practiced Elimination Communication (EC) from an early age, that we’d be nearly diaper-free by now, but that is just not the case.  Not anywhere close, which, considering the time I’ve invested wasted sitting around with The Dude on the potty over the past several months, is pretty depressing.

My attempts to find used cloth diapers on Craigslist have proven fruitless thus far, so I may have to give in and purchase them new.

Human garbage disposal

So, here’s the thing: I really hate wasting food.  In particular, I hate wasting good food (a foodie has to have her standards, after all) or food that should be good because we put precious time and high-quality ingredients into it.

My feelings about food waste do not mesh particularly well with introducing solid foods to a baby.  Whether you start with self-feeding (like BabyLed Weaning) from the beginning or spoon feeding, there will eventually be a time when your baby learns to feed him/herself, and this time will involve a learning curve.

The process is inherently messy and wasteful: food on the face, partially masticated food drooled onto the bib, food smashed in little fists, food dropped on the floor, food in the seat . . . .

Of course, since we try to only put high quality food in our bodies, we offer The Dude the same.  We take some normal steps to minimize waste:

  1. Only put a small amount of food in front of him at once.
  2. Make sure the floor is [relatively] clean, so we can hand back dropped pieces.
  3. Offer food when he’s not starving (i.e., AFTER he’s had mama’s milk), tired, or otherwise fussy.
  4. Minimize distractions during mealtime.

But there comes a point when the food is crumbled in pieces too small for The Dude to grasp and/or he loses interest in the meal.

Enter the human garbage disposal, AKA mama.  Yep, I unashamedly pick up the bits of food (including some that have been in his mouth and rejected) from the table, floor, and chair.

Upon first witnessing this, Matthew commented that baby birds typically eat food from the mama bird’s mouth, NOT the other way around.

I do have my limits — some items I rule out as too mushy, slobbery, etc.  Sometimes it goes straight into my mouth, other times, I dress it up a little, adding some nut butter to the leftover piece of bread, or tossing some partially chewed veggies in with some other food I’m going to eat.

I just can’t let good food go in the trash!  What extreme actions do you take to avoid food waste?

Deep freeze

No, I’m not talking about the weather — that’s been relatively warm.  My reply to a recent post by Mama Gone Green got me thinking about our deep freeze (i.e., chest freezer).

From the time we’ve brought it home over three years ago, we’ve maintained a full fifteen cubic foot deep freeze.  Depending on the time of year, exact contents vary, but they include bulk dry goods (flour, nuts, etc.), homemade baked goods (bread, cookies, muffins), and garden- and locally-grown veggies and fruit.

My reply to the afore-mentioned post, where I mentioned our freezer, made me wonder, “How green is our deep freeze?”

Green

  • Freezing garden and local produce helps us eat more local food more of the year.
  • Using the freezer to store bulk dry goods minimizes trips to the store and packaging.
  • Minimizes the potential for food waste if dry goods were stored at room temperature, with the risk of moths or other pests.
  • Allows us to “bake in bulk,” making and freezing multiple loaves of bread and double batches of relatively healthy muffins and cookie snacks as well as yummy desserts.
  • Baking in bulk makes better use of heating the oven and minimizes our use of prepackaged foods.

Not Green

  • Well, the energy needed to run the freezer, though it was NOT the energy hog we first feared.
  • And, although we do a very good job of using/eating everything we freeze, having the freezer can lead to overdoing things, i.e., purchasing/preserving more than we really need, which can lead to food waste.

We picked a chest freezer to minimize the the first item in the “Not Green” list — chest freezers are much more efficient than upright freezers, as relatively little cold is lost in opening and closing them (on the downside, they are a bit trickier to organize and use when it comes to finding a particular item).

So, do the “Greens” outweigh the “Not Greens?”  Objectively, I don’t know, but they present a fairly strong case.  Many of the items on the “Green” list are benefits for us, in-and-of themselves, especially with the garden produce to preserve and our love for cooking and baking.  I don’t see the freezer going anywhere soon, although we are realizing that it’s size may limit some of our housing options :-/