5 Things I Wish I’d Known About Elimination Communication

by Caprice Corona

When I was in my third trimester with my first pregnancy, my husband and I made a last-minute decision to move across the country, to be near my family for the birth of our first child. Needless to say, I was completely overwhelmed – finding a new provider so late in my pregnancy?!? A good childbirth class that still had openings *and* that we could complete before our due date?!? STRESSFUL. So, when my loving and well-meaning friend and mother of two would casually say things like, “Oh, well don’t even bother thinking about diapers, you should just do elimination communication!” or “It’s so easy to be diaper free! You’ll see! We’ve done it with both our boys and it’s AMAAAAAAZING!!”…welllll, let’s just say it didn’t inspire me to learn more. In fact, if I’m being completely honest, I really had no idea what she was talking about, and the concept of not using diapers with a new baby was just too mind-boggling and overwhelming for me to tackle.

In retrospect, I really, really wish my friend had spent some of her enthusiasm on helping me find information and resources about elimination communication, rather than just gushing about how AMAAAAAAZING it was. Though, to her credit, after practicing elimination communication with my second and third child, I can now attest that yes, indeed, it really is AMAAAAAAZING! But! Even now, from my vantage point as a Certified Go Diaper Free Coach and mother who has practiced EC with her second and third children (part-time, starting at 9 months with our second, and from birth, full-time with our third)…well, even I can understand that the concept of “going diaper free” can be a difficult one for many folks to fathom.

So, here are five things I wish my sweet friend (and master EC mama!) had told me about elimination communication:

1. “Going Diaper Free”, or practicing elimination communication (often abbreviated as “EC”) does not require you to be or become The Perfect Parent. (Pro tip: there *is* no such thing.)

2. Practicing elimination communication doesn’t mean that you’ll literally go without using any diapers ever. (Take it from me – with my second child, before I took the plunge with EC, I had managed to work up a pretty serious affair with cloth diapers. I was almost sad, when we started EC, that my kiddo was wearing fewer cute diapers. I said “almost”.)

3. Elimination communication does not have to be all-consuming; in fact, many people see great success even practicing part-time EC (Me! Me! Me!)

4. Even when you find out about how incredible elimination communication is (and, as noted above, it really is AMAAAAAAZING!), you DO NOT have to be *that parent* and go around blabbing to other parents about how GREAT it is, and how EASY, and lah-di-dah. Nope! (Please don’t.) In fact, you can just enjoy your success as your own delicious little secret…OR you can point your friends in the direction of great resources *ahem ahem*.

5. Elimination communication can actually be…FUN. (Not just satisfying, or money-saving, or time-saving, or even AMAAAAAAZING…but actually, truly FUN.)