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Friday 25 January 2013

Elimination Communication


A few months ago I met with a former colleague who has also relocated to this small
town. She is on a maternity leave, and has two kids: a seven-month-old girl and a three-
year-old boy.

She texted me out of the blue.

“It’s a beautiful day, can you meet at 5:00PM at the park near the train station?”

Years ago we had acted in shows together. Recently she landed a great job at the
theatre company in this small town. I contacted her asking about childcare, we met for
coffee, and suddenly I am reconnected with someone I used to know. Sound familiar?
Someone I used to know professionally. Friendly professionally. Occasional drinking-
night-out-to-relieve-the-stress in our twenties professionally. We have shared some
personal details. And now, here we are, at the parkette, and her son has his pants down
and is pissing up a tree, and her baby daughter’s bum is swung between her legs, while
she, my friend, makes an “ssssss” noise, and out comes her baby’s pee.

Two things are happening inside me.

One is a kind of gleeful weird conservative worrisome thinga-emotion as I observe my
daughter, the Guppins, observing the first young boy penis in her two-year-old life, with
pee coming out of it. The second is a shocked admiration — a why-the-heck-don’t-I-
know-about-this feeling — at learning my old-colleague-now-mamma-friend has toilet
trained her seven month old.

By making a pissing sound.

“She holds it in now till I make the pissing sound,” she says, clearly making sure her
babe has ample opportunity.

“I saw people doing it years back in China. There were mothers everywhere with babies
not wearing diapers, with slits down the backs of their clothes.”

I am impressed.

“You work at becoming in tune with your baby’s need to go. It’s like how you know when
your baby is tired, or when your baby is hungry. You know when they need to go.”

This makes sense.

“She poos every morning first thing. And I think I’ve only ever changed five wet diapers.”

Okay, that’s it. Pennies are pummeling me in the head. The ever-constipated Guppins
runs around like a hyperventilating chicken once every two days trying to hold in the
poop she knows is going to hurt when coming out.

“It’s sort of infant potty training. The latest term is Elimination Communication.” She rolls
her eyes and I wrinkle my nose. “You would think they’d come up with something better
than that,” she says.

“You should come up with something,” I say.

This girl is a force to be reckoned with. On all fronts. And I feel just…stupid. Of course
there is some gentle natural process for communicating elimination. Of course there
is! Duh! I mean, what did people do before paper was invented? More than once I’ve
thought, “It’s just terrible that my baby is wearing paper around her privates almost 24/7.”

At this she says, “Well, that’s why we use cloth.”

Now I feel like a real lazy bastard. Uninformed tree-killer. Forcing my daughter to wear
paper. What is wrong with me? What am I waiting for? I grab the Guppins, pull down her
pants, and start to “sssss” like Kai in Jungle Book.

My poor kid, half naked in a public park with her bum swung between my legs, facing
me, uncomfortable, still reeling from the penis viewing, crying.

Wunderkind Mamma Friend gently reminds me there is a process to this, that you have
to take your kid to puddles and make the pissing noise or whatever.

We bundle them up, share a few stories, and eventually say good-bye. Another
informative day in Motherland…in which I feel inadequate. I guess it’s time to do some
research. I mean, last I heard you were supposed to wait until they were three. Maybe
I should stop hearing things and follow my own instincts. I know my daughter is craving
some kind of structure around this stuff. Time to get cracking.

On my way out of the playground I turn and see this:


And I feel just a little less like a bad mother.

-Drama Mama

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