Be Consumer Smart…For Our Children’s Sake
Sep 13th, 2007 by ByNature
It was last June when I posted about our youngest son, DL2, having contact dermatitis (please refer my post “A Good Bar of Oatmeal Soap“). But I would like to make a correction. He actually had atopic dermatitis and he was almost 5 months old then. Atopic dermatitis is also known as skin asthma and is a type of eczema. This skin condition is hereditary and may go away as children grow older.
After I posted about the benefits of oatmeal soap, I decided to use Very Oatmeal on him the following day. Within a month’s time, there was improvement on his skin and the dry spots have lessened (the dry spots were on his back, arms, legs, and buttocks). I continued to use my handmade soaps on him, even on his hair–it totally beats using baby shampoos, which contain chemicals in them as well. Anyway, here’s what I do when I give DL2 a bath:
1) I clean his face with water and Cetaphil
2) Then I shampoo him with any of the following handmade soaps:
- Cocoa Butter Melt
- Honey Lemon
- Strawberry Milkshake (I started just last month when it was ready for use and I love it!)
3) I soap his body with either Very Oatmeal or Strawberry Milkshake (it has chamomile essential oil and goat’s milk in it)
4) Then I apply this cream prescribed by a dermatologist (which is taking forever to finish since I don’t use it so often on him)
But once this tube of cream is done, I don’t intend to use it on our baby anymore. For one, it’s too expensive to be used as an everyday cream. Second, it doesn’t seem to work as it is supposed to (there were weeks when I didn’t apply it on DL2 at all and I still saw improvement on his skin; and for those weeks I did use it, there were little or no difference at all with the dry areas). And third, it still contains all those unfamiliar and synthetic ingredients that I don’t want to keep applying on him. If it weren’t for his skin condition, I would opt not to use any lotion or cream on him at all. Hmm…I think I’ll do just that after I finish the tube, since the dry patches are almost gone and I know that my handmade soaps will do their job of leaving his skin moisturized anyway.
By the way, there’s something I want to share with you all. It’s just disappointing because pediatricians actually recommend this product for infants. Maybe they just need to dispose all the free samples given to them by pharmaceutical companies, but I also wonder if they do try them on themselves first before they say that they work.
Anyway, on our last visit to the pediatrician, we were given this soap sample to use on DL2 for his skin condition. I’m the type who always checks the ingredients of bath and personal care products, so I searched for the ingredients but they were not written on the box. It only mentioned this: “CONTAINS: Mineral oil BP 75mg/g”. But knowing that it had mineral oil in it, I did not want to try it on our son anymore because I know its negative effects on the skin and the body. Then last week, I chanced upon this website and saw the brand of the soap sample. I was surprised with what I read! Even though it’s not the exact one (I think), it’s still under the same name and company.
My fellow parents, it is best that we be knowledgeable and careful with what we use on our kids, especially on our babies, because living in a world brainwashed by media, it’s so easy to believe whatever the big companies claim their products contain and can do. I know it’s impossible to totally do away with them, but at least do some research and know more about the ingredients on their labels so you can decide after whether you should find an alternative natural product, use them less frequently or in smaller amounts, or never to use them at all.
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