Archive for July, 2008

"Natural", you say?

Beware out there fellow parents. I have fallen victim to the “natural” scam. A scam that is becoming more common as the “natural” revolution continues to grow. My husband and I had the girls at the family beach condo for a little getaway and shamefully, I ran out of wipes. Ordinarily I use the Nature Babycare wipes because my girls have severe eczema and the most sensitive skin I have ever known, however you can’t get them at the local grocery store so I was on the hunt for a suitable alternative. The only thing I could find that suggested it might be appropriate were the Huggies “Natural” wipes. I took a quick look and they were perfume and alcohol free. Check, check. With the twins screaming in the buggy I grabbed the MEGA bag of them and didn’t look any closer as I trusted Huggies with their “NATURAL” title for the wipes. After bringing them home I had a look at the ingredients and was appalled. I am not really sure what is actually “natural” about them at all. Chemicals right, left and centre and no description of what they are for. I realize that many wipes have certain chemicals to adjust the pH of the wipes to skin pH etc but the list on the package was extensive with very few things I could actually recognize let alone pronounce. The point of this blog is not necessarily to rag on Huggies, but to alert us all to the fact that many companies are trying to get on the “natural” band wagon and make a buck or two. Just as it is important to read food labels, do read labels closely for skin care products, wipes, diapers, you name it! Not every company has your family’s best interest in mind. “Natural” my eye…

Beat the Bum Sweat

Now that summer has finally arrived on our “Wet-coast” we are all trying to beat the heat. As I was pushing my twins up a steep hill in their new tandem, beast of a stroller, I was reacquainted with an old summer friend, bum sweat. More info that you needed, right? Well, it got me thinking as I was begging my dog to help pull us up the hill, babies must get bum sweat too, right?

The temperature “down there” it turns out is actually a very important issue for our little ones. In particular for our little boys. With fertility issues on the rise, numerous studies have been conducted on the temperatures inside diapers and it turns out that babies diapered in disposables with plastic outer liners can be up to 2 degrees higher than those diapered in cotton cloth diapers with cotton covers. It is important to keep the “in-pant” temperature down right from the beginning of life to ensure your little one has good reproductive health later in life.

Given this, make sure when choosing a diaper for your little one, choose a cotton cloth diaper or a disposable such as our fabulous Nature Babycare diapers that do NOT have a plastic outer lining but are in fact lined with a corn based paper which breathes much better than their plastic counterparts. How do I know this? Not just a good educated guess. On our last walk, Alicia wore a conventional diaper and Maddy wore a Nature Babycare diaper each with a small thermometer in their pants. The temperature difference was almost 2 degrees C. In the world of male fertility that is very significant. You don’t like bum sweat and neither does your baby!