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Home / Lifestyle

'Off-grid' child urinates live on air

Daily Mail
23 Jul, 2016 01:40 AM3 mins to read

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Source: News.com.au

Adele and Matt Allen were in the news earlier this week after they spoke about their "off-grid" parenting style.

The couple, who live in Brighton in the UK, don't believe in doctors or conventional schooling and Adele still breastfeeds their five-year-old-son.

The family made headlines again today, after they appeared on British TV show This Morning.

The couple were invited to speak about their alternative lifestyle, and explain why they have opted to raise their two kids outside of the mainstream education system.

But viewers were left shocked when their youngest child tottered off to wee on the studio floor - live on air.

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Adele and Matt Allen believe in an all-natural approach to bringing up their children - so much so they refuse modern medicine, traditional schooling and encourage full-term breastfeeding.

Adele, 32, and Matt, 33, from Brighton, call their parenting style 'Off-Grid Parenting' and their children Ulysses, five and Ostara, one, are therefore both still breastfed, have never visited a doctor and will not attend a mainstream school.

The family are asking for donations to fund their all-natural lifestyle.
The family are asking for donations to fund their all-natural lifestyle.

When Adele, a writer, fell pregnant with her son, the couple's controversial methods felt completely natural to them.

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She said: "Off-grid is moving towards self sustainability and being a bit more free range and less institutionalised."

Matt said: "We did collect a lot of information but essentially it was just this feeling."

Adele gave birth to both her children completely unassisted and with no medical intervention with only her husband Matt by her side.

She said: "The thought of giving birth in a hospital just didn't appeal to me because of many reasons - mostly the observer effect.

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"Also, the interventions I think can be gently nudged on you when you are in a very vulnerable state."

Adele and Matt also decided to have 'lotus births' meaning the placenta and umbilical cords were not surgically removed at birth.

Instead, Adele carried the attached placenta in a cool bag - scattered with salt and rose petals to disguise the smell - around with her until it fell off naturally.

She said: "With both my births it took six days for the umbilical chord to fall away naturally.

"You wrap it up and keep it clean and it falls away and forms a perfect belly button.

"In my knowledge, it's perfectly safe and it worked beautifully for us. I don't know of any known cases where it's gone wrong.

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"I very much honour the postpartum-period and I didn't go out at all during that first week. So it was just a matter of transporting it to the toilet or to the kitchen."

Adele feels very strongly about full-term breastfeeding and her five-year-son still regularly feeds from her bosom for comfort.

She said: "Ulyssess does still nurse from time to time. Since the baby came along it has decreased rapidly and we had to come to a mutual understanding that it needed to graduate down a bit, but then I wasn't willing to say 'no you need to stop now.

"I think its up to him to decide when he wants to move on from it."

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