Video: 'Potty talk' helps babies become diaper-free

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SHORELINE, Wash. - Good news for parents up to their elbows in dirty diapers.

A little known technique using "potty talk" now promises to eliminate diapers from your daily life and possibly even have your children toilet trained by their first birthday - all while helping save the planet.

A long leisurely lunch at the Martinez home invariably turns to a precipitous process of elimination. Little Flora Martinez is doing her business on the potty at just 3 months old.

Flora is part of a worldwide movement called elimination communication, or "E.C.," where parents put an end to diaper duty.

Parents learn their baby's verbal and physical cues, a particular grunt or kick, that signal it's time. Parents then plop the child onto the potty and let nature take its course.

Nadine Martinez, a working mother of three, started Flora at just 6 weeks old.

There were quite a few misses of pees initially, but after three weeks of close attention to her daughter's signals, all systems were a go.

"Once I started it, it wasn't too hard," said Martinez.

So it really does become second nature?

"I think it's more tough to actually imagine doing it and when you try it it's easier that you think," said Martinez.

Even so, Flora still uses a diaper overnight and the family takes potty breaks every 20 minutes when out and about to make sure they don't get caught with their proverbial pants down. But they believe the hard work will all pay-off in the end.

"I've seen young children who are starting to walk, 12, 13 months, walking over to the potty when they have to go and initiating it and going," said Martinez.

But pediatricians say that is definitely the exception and not the rule. Dr. Ginger Thomas teaches potty training classes at Seattle's Children's Hospital. She warns parents who try E.C. to manage their expectations.

"My concern is that parents would not be successful at an early age and then find that it's very frustrating or that they go in with reservations when the child is two or three years old and going through what we consider a more normal potty training process or age," said Thomas.

But believers in E.C. stress it doesn't have to be an all or nothing proposition for your child.

"You can use disposable, you can use cloth, you can use trainers, you can have them naked. They can have a different situation at daycare than they have at home and they will easily adapt," said Kerste Conner, "diaper-free baby" mentor. "For most families it will be a shorter journey."

And for the Martinez family the proof is in the potty.

"E.C" advocates also point to its environmental benefits, helping eliminate some of the 17 billion disposable diapers Americans dump in landfills every year. Disposables also cost the average family between $5,000-$7,000 by the time a child is potty-trained.