No More Tears

Although, I have a hairdressing background, it was a long time ago that I stood behind the chair. When I heard recently that Johnson and Johnson were being questioned about the ingredients in their baby shampoo, I thought of a boss I had at one time who insisted that the shampoo had novocaine in it and that was the reason it didn’t hurt baby’s eyes. Novocaine, really? … she said her mother told her that, and she believed it.


Obviously that’s crazy but, we were taught in school that J & J had simply balanced the PH of the shampoo so that it wouldn’t be alkaline or acidic and that was the secret of the “no more tears”.

Now, consumers and activists have pressured J & J enough apparently, that they are now, according to the Huffington Post, “continuing efforts to remove traces of two harmful chemicals from its baby products around the world.” The two chemicals, 1,4-dioxane and quaternium-15 are the ones in question now although J& J have removed other dangerous chemicals and ingredients from their baby products before. The worry is in the fact that babies have more sensitive and highly permeable skin than adults which contributes to higher health risks. J& J has no known plans to remove these chemicals from their adult product lines at this time.

To read the Huffington Post article in full: http://tinyurl.com/br9ntja

Viral Baby Video Stresses Mom out

I watched a cute video the other day because it had a baby, went viral quickly and I wanted to see what people were talking about. A mother taped her 2 year old having a tantrum and the family dog had a reaction to it. Cute, right? No one was hurt in the taping, no one was mistreated, no one was humiliated, it was just a very short, cute video of a 2 year old and a dog.


It actually started to get some major attention but it was the negative comments from the "internet crazies" that may cause Mom Caroline to need therapy. Internet anonymity causes people to be cruel and mean spirited for no apparent reason. Shame, shame! Read more from this mom here: http://tinyurl.com/6qpgcya

Too Particular to Push?

When I was younger, elective c-sections were unheard of. Women actually wanted to avoid a c-section. It was more recovery time and they really didn’t want the scar. Of course, that was back when recovery from a vaginal birth got you a week or two of rest time in the hospital; and that was with no complications.


This trend of elective c-sections for convenience bothers me. I’m old fashioned I guess, but I feel like convenience goes out the door when you have children and you might as well get used to that from the beginning. If you can’t even be inconvenienced to have the baby naturally, how are you going to deal with the day to day of a child?

I have a friend that’s “going there”. She’s due in late November but has insisted they wait until Dec 1 because….get this… she doesn’t like the birthstone for November.

Now some facts; elective c-sections have been on the rise steadily for at least 15 yrs. Some critics even question how many elective c-sections the patients truly choose and how many are surgeries pushed by medical professionals who don’t want their weekend or vacations interrupted by a spontaneous delivery.

Researchers say that elective c-sections are safest for the baby when done between 39 to 41 weeks of gestation. Some experts also believe that elective c-sections can lead to premature births due to inaccurate dating and these preterm babies can face a host of health problems.

Women who have a first baby by cesarean are also at increased risk of complications during their second delivery, regardless of how they birth, according to statistics.

At any rate, if this is a purely convenience decision for the mother, I hope she’s not shocked when she finds out that the baby won’t be checking her daytimer before needing feeding, burping, changing, sleeping, crying, changing, bathing, dressing, changing, etc. I ask you, do we really need to be scheduling something as important as the birth of our babies like hair appointments?