How important is it to keep her dry?

Actually, this is a good question, and one that's been going through my head for a few weeks now.

Yiskah, hopefully I'm not hijacking your thread by adding to your question. My apologies if I am though (please tell me).

Along the same lines though, my daughter doesn't wear a diaper at all unless she's sleeping or we leave the house (we work more on communication I guess, and it's just easier to pick her up and plop her on the potty). But what I was wondering, is if I should be putting her in one to allow her to get wet, so she will understand the feeling and opts to hold it until the diaper comes off.

What we do now is she sits on a flat cloth diaper (not yet crawling) and we do have our misses. If I put her in her highchair, she also sits on one there and it's an almost guarantee that we will have a miss (what is it with babies peeing in the chair anyway?).

My problem is that she doesn't seem to be bothered whatsoever though, with sitting on a wet diaper.

Is there something I'm (we're) missing?

(I hope I'm asking for Yiskah too).

OP, I don't know what your laundry situation is, but soon enough you won't be having to wash a lot of diapers. EC is easier in warm weather (OK, assuming you're in the Northern Hemisphere here) and when she gets older she'll pee less and less. At 12 months, in warm weather, I have very little laundry, because my LO only pees about five times a day. And we catch most. Not hard when there are only five!

sgmom, I don't think you need to put a diaper on her just so she can feel wetness. I think the recommendation to use a diaper where the baby can feel wetness is a way of contrasting that with something that is designed to keep the baby feeling dry. If they are going to pee in a diaper, it's best it's a diaper that lets them feel the wetness. (And yes, change as soon as possible, whatever that means to the situation!) My baby sometimes is bothered by wetness, sometimes she could not even care less about being wet! Sounds like you're doing great!

I don't know why they like to go in chairs, but my dd did that too!

Quote:
I've been thinking about this issue lately... my son never, ever was bothered by wet or dirty diapers, even though we always changed him right away. He's almost four, still has frequent "misses" and could not care less. My daughter always seemed extremely sensitive to wet diapers; she would scream if she had a miss. However, starting around 8 months, she seems to have suddenly lost that sensitivity. It's not as if she is "diaper-trained" - she has had plenty of days with no misses at all, has had many dry nights from very early on. My guess is that she is more mobile now and has so many other things that she can focus on that being wet no longer presents the same urgency that it did in the earlier months when she was not as distracted by the world around her.

i personally think it's almost more important to change them right away and keep them dry as much as possible than it is to catch anything in a potty. or at the very least those two are of equal importance. i really like the alternative term to EC "natural infant hygiene" because i think that expresses how i feel about the process. a huge reason i started EC with my first when she was 9 months old was because i have always found diapers to be a kind of disgusting thing and i hated that she would sometimes sit for a while in a wet diaper before i noticed (when she was wearing a cover, which we didn't do much at home, for the same reason). i was already endeavoring to keep her dry as much as possible and i felt that the EC would compliment that really nicely so that while she remained connected to the feeling of peeing = wetness she could also learn that she didn't have to go in the diaper at all if she didn't want to.

and like hrsmom said, though it might mean more wash in the beginning, it's going to mean less over time.