By KAREN PETERS

When my first son was born, I didn’t think twice about running out and purchasing the usual fare: petroleum jelly, baby oil, and the moisturizer that we all associate with that magical “baby smell.” I had about seven or eight baby bags already packed with all these products—everything I thought I needed to take care of my baby. For sure, I believed that the products everyone else was using would be best for my new baby.

It didn’t occur to me that the typical baby products would contain harsh, toxic, or carcinogenic ingredients, but I was wrong; when I finally started reading the labels, my eyes were opened to another reality entirely. It really snapped me out of my new mommy daze and made me remember that I was born knowing everything I needed to know about how to incorporate more natural products into my baby’s skin care regimen. After all, the wise mothers who came before me embraced nature as they cared for their children, and an internship in the bush of Cameroon, Africa, inspired me to start mixing up natural and organic shea butters and essential oils and herbs in the lab, a.k.a. my kitchen. I’ve long created natural, simple, freshly made, healthy products for grownups who shunned ingredients that were deemed toxic, irritating, or cancer-causing (and believe me, there were thousands of them).

Right then and there, I got “the wake up call” and started fashioning some of my grownup products for my baby’s delicate skin. Everything I blended for him was natural and had no more than four or five ingredients. When it was bath or bedtime, he would coo and ooh about our annointing rituals using the wonderful, safe products that I made especially for him—one of the best, most powerfully nurturing gifts that I could offer him. I could rest easy knowing that I was massaging his skin with healthy, nourishing baobab fruit seed oil instead of coating it with a by product of gasoline and kerosene (mineral oil, also known as baby oil). It did me and my baby good to soothe his mild eczema with shea butter and lavender instead of flammable, chemically-treated hydrocarbons (petroleum jelly). He and I were happier cleansing his tender little arms and legs with a wash made from olive and coconut oil instead of antifreeze and solvent ( 1, 4 dioxane is found in more than half of the baby washes on the market and is an ingredient used to make coolant and bubbles).

Now that all of my boys are past the baby stage—my youngest is 3, yeah!—and I no longer blend baby care products in my kitchen, I literally make it my business to share what I know with other mothers and encourage the blending of something sweet and beautiful for babies. Now I host Honey B.U.N.S. (Babies Use No Synthetics) gatherings where a bunch of us mothers get together around our sacred blending pots and add a lot of love, blessings, and super simple ingredients to create some of the most incredibly nurturing baby washes, oils, and lotions for special, spiritual and most perfect beings—our babies!

Here, a simple but special recipe you can make all on your own—safe for you and your babies. It’s simply delicious. Enjoy!

Basic Recipe for Gentle Massage Oil

What you’ll need:
16 oz. jojoba oil (this oil is most similar to the components in human sebum, our inherent moisturizer.)
16 oz. sweet almond oil (moisturizing and gentle; easily absorbed)
16 drops of lavender essential oil (this is not fragrance, but a pure essential oil for soothing any skin ailment)*
8 drops of Roman chamomile (this is not a fragrance, but a pure essential oil for calming)*
4 4-ounce bottles
1 32-ounce jar

The mix:
Pour all ingredients into the 32 ounce bottle or jar; shake well and pour evenly into the four, 4-ounce bottles. Enjoy massaging your baby with this special, delicious elixir.

Note: Natural does not always mean best for your baby. There are some babies who are sensitive to many things, including ingredients that come from the Earth, such as essential oils. If your baby is prone to allergic reactions or has sensitive skin, simply use jojoba oil without essential oils. Also, please note that all ingredients with the exception of the jars can be purchased at Whole Foods or your local health food store.

About our MyBrownBaby contributor
Karen Peters is founder of The Peace & Beauty Project, a nonprofit organization that encourages girls to honor natural beauty while making health conscious decisions. On Wednesday, November 11 at 5 p.m., she will host a “Babies & Bubbles Baby Care Workshop” to help moms learn about the ingredients that are safe for babies’ skin. To learn more about Karen’s organization and her workshop, click HERE or call 407.339.7529.

By DENENE MILLNER

I found the papers when I was 12—in a metal box tucked under my parents’ bed. I wasn’t supposed to be snooping all through their personal belongings; my mother had put a lock on her door, presumably to keep my brother and I from dipping into her stash of moon pies and using her pricy, smelly lotions, and discovering her and my dad’s copy of “The Joy of Sex.” But kids are experts at getting into stuff and finding the hidden, and that little flimsy lock was no match for the wits of a curious preteen and her big brother. If we wanted to see it, it was going to get seen.

But this? This I wasn’t ready for.

BABY GIRL…
DENENE MILLNER…
HEREYBY FORMALLY ADOPTED ON THIS DAY…

My fingers trembled as I brought the paper closer to my face—as if the words would magically morph into something wholly different if I just stared at them a little harder, a little longer, a little bit more closely to my 20/20s. But the words just… wouldn’t… change.

And then, suddenly, it felt like someone had fired buckshot into my chest. The shock was almost unbearable: My mom and dad weren’t my mom and dad. My brother? Not my brother, either. None of them by blood, anyway.

To this day, I can’t tell you how I got those papers back into the metal box, how I pushed that metal back under their bed, how I convinced my legs to carry me out of their room and shut the door and lock it back and act like I’d never seen those papers.

How I managed to keep their secret—my secret—for all those years.

For years—more than 20 years—I refused to acknowledge my adoption or tell my parents I knew they’d adopted me. At first it was because I was scared they’d be mad at me for snooping, but as I grew older, that morphed into my need to protect their privacy. Maybe they didn’t want to explain to everyone coming and going why they didn’t have biological babies together, or where they found me, or why my birth parents gave me up. Maybe, I reasoned, my mom and dad feared I would search for the people who abandoned me on the stoop of that New York City orphanage—that I would find them and, in turn, reject the two people who didn’t give me blood, but who truly gave me life.

I couldn’t do that to them. To me. To us. Though my birth parents deserve praise for birthing me and having the courage to love me enough to give me away, my parents get the glory for raising me, educating me, supporting me, disciplining me, and loving me beyond measure—and doing it with an enormous amount of grace and wisdom. Despite the odds. With little money. And no help. Just them.

And love.

No, there was no need to find the birth parents—it didn’t even occur to me to do so. Not until, that is, I became pregnant with my first baby.

Not knowing, you see, wreaked havoc on my health history, which, because I don’t know who my birth parents are, is basically non-existent. From the time I’ve been old enough to go to the doctor on my own, I’ve been forced to leave the “family history” part of the stacks of first-visit papers blank, which always leads to a really awkward opening conversation with my doctors, who realize pretty early on that they’ll have to treat whatever is ailing me without the extremely valuable “family health history” tools they need to figure out what might be causing my health problems. I haven’t a clue if cancer runs in my family, or diabetes, or weight problems—hypertension, stroke, gout. You name it, it could be lurking, waiting to claim me, and I will have no clue until it taps me on the shoulder and goes to work on my system.

This was most glaring while I was pregnant; neither of my ob-gyns had the valuable information they needed to help me figure out health risks for my pregnancy and, more important, my children. They knew Nick’s family’s health and were able to keep an eye out for specific Chiles family issues. But my side of it was the big unknown—you might as well have crossed an “X” across my paperwork.

And this disturbed me greatly.

I couldn’t change this in time enough for my pregnancies, and while I still have no interest in finding out who my birth parents are (wouldn’t be able to anyway, seeing as she/he/they left me on a stoop in the middle of Manhattan) I do wish that the government would change laws to at least allow adopted kids access to their health history, even if their adoption records are sealed tighter than Ft. Knox.

This doesn’t—and shouldn’t—be your story if you know who your birth parents are you’re looking to get pregnant or are pregnant. For sure, all you have to do to gather up your family health history is to start asking questions. Ask your mother and father who has/had what in their family; hit up your aunties and uncles at the next family reunion; quiz your cousins at the next barbeque. Your play aunties might even have some info—might know what your granddaddy’s brother might have had when he passed on.

Then take that information and write it down. The March of Dimes is a fantastic resource for info on the importance of family history, and has on its website a downloadable family health questionnaire to help walk you through the information you should be gathering. Take a look at what the March of Dimes has to say about the importance of genetic testing, too, to help you see into your baby’s health future.

I didn’t have this option.

You do.

Please, don’t take it for granted.

For more information on family history, genetic testing, and pre-pregnancy, pregnancy, and newborn care, please check out the March of Dimes website. This blog post was donated by MyBrownBaby to the March of Dimes as part of its March of Dimes Moms initiative.