Katherine's Favorite Baby

Meet baby Muna, a beautiful little girl that lives just on the other side of the church from our village house.  She was born a few weeks before we arrived in Marulaon last November, and she quickly became Katherine's favorite baby. 

 

Muna's mom, Sugan, introduced me to the wonders of infant potty training.  When you keep your baby so close to you all the time, she explained, it's easy to know when they need to go to the bathroom.  Now that I'm back in the land of the internet (slow is better than none!), I looked up "infant potty training", also known as "elimination communication".

 

 

According to one of the articles I found, "Infant potty training mimics the time-worn practices of women in parts of Africa and Asia, where mothers often carry around their undiapered babies. These moms manage to avoid being soiled by their bare-bottomed children by learning to anticipate their elimination needs: When a mom notices a signal or pattern that suggests her child is about to relieve himself, she holds him away from her body."

 

Sounds difficult from a Western perspective, but I've seen it firsthand when we were in the village.  In the middle of Evening Prayer, Sugan pulled off Muna's pants, squatted her on the edge of the wooden bench, and Muna took care of business on the easily cleaned up concrete church floor.  This happened so many times, I finally approached Sugan one morning at market and asked her about it.  To my surprise, I learned that most of the babies in the village are trained the same way.  Sure saves time and energy on washing diapers by hand!