Organic Infant Care

When you first bring your new baby home from the delivery ward you may feel as though your world is heading directly out of control. The demands are endless, the products expensive, and your time has to be filled fully with care or sleep. At times it can seem hard to keep a sustainable household as well as behaving appropriately in regard to your newborn’s health. There are a number of ways to forgo the wasteful nature of conventional products and instead bring your own ingenuity to creating an organic home.

Baby wipes tend to be one of the most used and drastically wasteful products used in infant care. Instead of exposing your child to harsh chemicals in the name of quick cleaning you can create your own re-usable baby wipe.

• Take a few large, organic cloth napkins and cut them into smaller strips.
• Create an all natural liquid to saturate the cloth strips with: Pour in a third of a cup of filtered water, a quarter of a cup of organic shampoo, and one and a quarter tablespoons of apple cider vinegar into a large mixing bowl. Mix that thoroughly and then add a quarter of a cup of aloe cream, a drop of lavender oil, two drops of peppermint oil, and a drop of tea tree oil. From here you should also add a tablespoon of calendula oil.
• Mix this all thoroughly and then keep it in a sealed container in the refrigerator. Soak the clothes in the liquid, use them during infant care, wash them in the washing machine, and then use them again.

If you would like to make your own calendula oil for the baby wipes, or just for the child’s skin care, you can do this easily as well. Take a cup of either flax seed oil or sunflower oil and mix in two and two thirds tablespoons of crushed calendula flowers. From here you put this mixture into a pot and heat it mildly for three and a half hours, at which time you strain out the calendula flowers.

Infant skin tends to be extra sensitive to allergic toxins in conventional products so it is important to start their life off away from the chemical influence. On small infective abrasions you can first use vinegar or all-natural salve to help treat it, and then a natural honey can help draw the infection out. If the baby was exposed to a minor burn or bug bight you can create your own all natural cream, or even just rub cucumber juice on it to help sooth any pain or irritation. If they get a bee sting you can try using onion juice on the area. Cabbage leaves and white wine vinegar have been known to do the same things.

The most important things to take into consideration are your own environmental convictions. Avoid disposable diapers; go with breast feeding instead of formula, and keep synthetic chemicals out of your home. This is the perfect way to keep your baby’s health at the highest possible level and to usher them into an environmentally and socially conscience home life.