This is a wonderful video. It is very helpful for an important part of parenting: feeding your baby the very best nutrition available and nurturing the most beautiful, essential bond there is. (Yes I am a breast feeding enthusiast.)
I found the video enlightening in many respects. It shows all the do’s and don’ts, but apart from that, it shows women and their babies of many different racial and social/cultural backgrounds with different body types in an experience that unites us all.
According to Priscilla Dunstan and a group of researchers who back her personal findings, babies all over the world make a select group of sounds for certain situations such as discomfort, needing to burp and being hungry. Our conclusion after seeing it work with us and some other parents/babies: this is real and it’s great!
When you know about the five sounds, it becomes so much more clear what your baby needs in any moment. This brings relaxation, fulfillment, understanding, it saves time and energy and crying and it just brings such tremendous joy to be able to provide what is needed.
All we did was watch the video below, print a little flyer with the sounds and their meaning and practice together, for fun, before Lua was born. We’d say Neeeeeh and the other would shout: food!, or Eh, eh, and the other would say: burp :). It was a fun time preparing for our first months as parents, which is when babies utter these sounds based on their natural (and universal) reflexes such as sucking when they are hungry.
It really works and it made life so much easier. Understanding what your little loved one wants, makes all the difference in the world.
Watching this video teaches you all you need to know:
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Most baby’s around the world don’t wear diapers and while many people don’t know it yet, a baby of around 1-2 years with full control over their pelvic floor muscles is very normal in many cultures.
Actually, it is natural for a baby to want to be clean and dry and all the musculature and control thereof is in place for them to hold it up for at least a bit of time.
At 9-10 months old, our Lua has only had one poo diaper in the past two weeks and she uses only about three to four diapers per day (24 hours). Whenever she can, she will pee and poo on the potty. For us and the people around us who have used the same approach it’s really normal, but for some others it is a weird sight at first to see a baby this small using the toilet.
The approach is called diaper free in English or luiervrij or babyzindelijkheidscommunicatie in Dutch. I’m writing this so you can look it up on YouTube :).
Basically what we did was very simple: every time we would notice Lua pooing (or peeing, but that’s harder to notice), we would make a sound and a gesture. For us, the sound is psss and the gesture is like waving but with closed hand (fist). That’s all we did.
When she was five months old, I placed her on the potty for the first time, made the sound and gesture and to my joyful surprise… she peed! And it wasn’t a coincidence; since then, whenever she is on the potty and she has pee in her belly, she will pee.
Pooing took a while longer, but at nine months old she now has a belly rhythm and we haven’t had to change a poo diaper in weeks now :).
We are now waiting for her to start using the sound and/or gesture to intentionally signal to us that she wants to go.
For us, the approach has been joyful and effortless. It has already saved us a lot of money, laundry and dirty diaper changes as well.
