Cover Page • Community - The Good Stuff • Ecovillage Baby • Tony B's Bio • Suzanne's New Warren • Nature Corner • Poetry • Thank You

Ecovillage Baby

By Ted Sterling and Sara Peters

Aurelia is nine months old as of the end of March. As we navigate this first year of parenthood, we draw inspiration from friends and family who are parenting (or have parented) their own young persons. Many of the decision-making patterns we’ve established to step more lightly on the earth apply also to the choices we have in raising a child. When there is an option to do or make something for ourselves rather than buying it, we do so; reusable goods always trump disposables; in general we do our best to make do with less. While we’ll readily acknowledge we’re still novices compared to some of you out there, we’re nonetheless satisfied to have successfully avoided some of the worst ecological and consumer excesses attached to raising an infant in our culture. What follows is a brief treatment of our take on the two biggest hurdles, mounds of diapers and mounds of stuff, to raising a baby eco-style in the first six months.

Using cloth diapers was among the easiest decisions we made. Disposables were just not an option for us. The facts are known—mountains of diapers and money lost in landfills long after we’re dead, chemicals and dyes nestled against baby’s tender bits; and yet convenience and squeamishness trumps all when the price is right. On the other hand, cloth diapers can exact a heavy toll in wash water and detergents. Our solution: a combination of cloth diapers done right and natural infant hygiene, or “elimination communication” (see below), which approximates how humans have probably tended their bairn for millennia, and still do in China and other traditional societies.

There was no question that we’d be breastfeeding as nature intended, and breastfed babies often don’t poo for days at a time after the first month or so, so most of the diapers we dealt with contained only pee, which is water-soluble and sterile when it departs the body. The system we developed was simply to keep a five gallon bucket of water from our rain barrel into which we put pee diapers throughout the day; then once a day we’d wring those out and dry them on a line or rack for re-use—about a ten minute job. With poo diapers we’d wash off any solids and rinse them, then soak with a little detergent, rinse, dry, and store until there were enough to warrant washing. At that point we’d wash all accumulated diapers of both types, and start fresh. Now that Aurelia has started on solid foods, her poops are more frequent but also easier to clean off of a diaper and the pre-rinse before the wash is unnecessary.

A thorough explanation of diaper-freedom, or elimination communication, is better left to one of the available books on the subject, but these are the basics: babies are not unaware of their eliminations; by paying close attention to rhythms and timing and listening intently to your child’s various forms of communication and your own intuition, you can help them to eliminate outside or in a designated receptacle (toilet or small bowl, depending on your circumstances) instead of in a diaper. If a child never learns to sit in a wet diaper, she never has to unlearn it. By making a cueing sound when you hold her to go, she learns to associate the sound with the action and before long, as early as a couple months, she is holding it and you are cueing her to go on a regular basis. We certainly still miss some, but the communication is unmistakable, and between this practice and the diaper regime we followed, we ended up washing diapers in the machine only every three or four weeks, with a total stock of four dozen or so diapers which had all seen prior use. In our case Aurelia will probably continue to use diapers until she is sufficiently mobile to get herself to a potty, but her diaper is usually dry. Some days are better than others, and the communication evolves, but we are pleased with our decision to go this route, and Aurelia seems happy with it too. If you want to learn more, check out Diaper Free! The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene by Ingrid Bauer.

We haven’t any room in our 240 sq.ft. of living space to spare for “babyphernalia”, the mounds of toys and clothes that are typically heaped upon the new parents and child, many of which only see a month or two of use before the child outgrows them or gets distracted by the next shiny toy coming in the door. Getting grandparents and friends who aren’t accustomed to gifting second-hand items to patronize children’s second-hand shops isn’t easy. To encourage folks in this direction we sent out a letter with the invitations to the baby shower that detailed our needs and desires, both practically and ecologically. Among other things, these included: used, natural fiber clothing and toys rather than new—hand-me-downs preferred!; wooden toys, or used plastic ones, but no new plastic toys and no electronic noise-making toys; home-made items; and gifts of money toward Aurelia’s education savings account, or gifts of time with her, rather than more things. Some friends seemed to feel sheepish giving hand-me-downs, but we made sure to reassure them that such gifts were exactly what we’d wanted. Where we did ask for new items, it was for organic fiber clothing or to meet a functional need that wasn’t readily available second-hand, like a particular style of baby sling that allowed us to wear Aurelia and keep up with the busy DR lifestyle. This effort did not entirely prevent the arrival of new clothing and the occasional giant new stuffed animal, but between re-gifting, vigilantly weeding out unneeded items, and kind but clear requests to return something that wouldn’t work for us, we’ve succeeded in keeping the accumulation to a relative minimum. It has also brought out the creative and meaningful gifts we imagine were more common in times past.

Those are the biggest practical eco-issues we faced in having a child. Many of the others we might mention are more cultural or health-related, like co-sleeping, prenatal health, choosing a midwife, minimizing intrusive and unwarranted technology, and generally trusting nature’s elegant means of procreation and infant care. The US medical industry has done an admirable job of reducing infant and maternal mortality in the birthing process, but it has also marginalized the natural capacity of mother and child in most cases to successfully and beautifully accomplish the task without intervention, and left little room for the powerful emotional experiences of all involved in this life-changing event. The most important advice we can give is to do your homework, be aware of your choices (including those not readily offered by a given birth setting or baby-supply retailer), and choose what is best for you.

Look for more thoughts on raising a baby to walk lightly on the earth in future issues!

Cover Page • Community - The Good Stuff • Ecovillage Baby • Tony B's Bio • Suzanne's New Warren • Nature Corner • Poetry • Thank You