Who Gives A Shit: Diaperless Babies Redux

Photo credit: Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Oh, for fuck's sake. In the N.Y./Region section of the NY Times last Thursday there was an article entitled Baby's Latest: Going Diaperless, which seeks to enlighten us about the latest craze in super-smug-I'm-doing-it-better-than-you parenting: a.k.a. Elimination Communication, or E.C. Basically, parents are so in tune with their bebes they can tell when the kid is about to go and they rush them over to the toilet...or the kitchen sink...or the bowls they apparently leave around the house. Naturally, Park Slope is well-represented in the article:

Ms. Shapiro, a founder of Birth Day Presence, a childbirth education studio in Park Slope and SoHo, said most clients laughed when they heard about elimination communication, but one or two in every group signed up. At three weeks, her daughter could hold her bowel movements until she was put over the bowl, she said.

“I have absolutely been at parties and witnessed people putting their baby over the sink,” she said. One client took her baby and her bowl to a party, held her naked baby over the bowl, “and she just did it at this person’s party in the corner, but obviously they were close friends,” Ms. Shapiro said.

Of course, the commenters are going bananas. More power to these people, as far as I'm concerned. My kids are long past the diaper stage (HallelujahPraiseTheLord!), so it's hard for me to give two shits about how other people deal with their kids' shit. 

Surprisingly, the thing that bugged me the most while reading this article was that it sounded so familiar. Hmmmm...could it be that I'd read about it before? In The New York Times? In the N.Y./Region section? IN FREAKING 2005?????? 

So, what's the deal? Does somebody over there have Alzheimer's? Or did they just forget to add the #tbt hashtag to the article?