Making sense of media warnings for our kids

By Natalie B.

Last weekend, a good friend and fellow working mom called me really distressed. She is a new mom of an 11-month-old girl and was driving an hour from her home in the suburbs to go to Whole Foods to buy glass bottles and organic food for her baby. Her main reason for calling was to “warn me” against the dangers and evil lurking in plastic baby bottles that of course we had been giving to our girls since birth. You’ve heard about this one right?  New warnings are being hammered out by the media to warn people against the potentially carcinogenic chemicals contained in plastic bottles (usually with the marking “PC” or recycled label number 7.) But her concerns didn’t end with plastic bottles. She was also concerned with baby lotions which have also come under the spotlight of late because they have been found to have carcinogenic chemicals. But wait!  What about those immunizations that might give your kids autism.  And what about the horrible chemicals found in cow’s milk, harmful chemicals in diapers and the all too real mad cow disease and cleaning products that you use around the home and on and on it goes.  What is a mother to do?!  It’s bad enough that most of us working moms don’t actually see what goes on or in our kids bodies during the day but with these added (very valid) concerns it’s easy to get overwhelmed. How do we make sense of it all?  Where do we start?

My advice is to just take it one step at a time. The end goal is to protect and prevent harm to our children.  Just take a deep breath, read, be aware and act as best as you can. If you’re still using plastic baby bottles, don’t heat them in the microwave (heating the plastic brings out harmful chemicals and displaces them into the liquid).  If you’re using a skin care product for your child that might be harmful, stop using it.  Just bathe with water and a wash cloth until you can figure out what product you would like to replace it with (we use Burt‘s Bees products or Basis soap). People were bathing their kids long before we had “tear free” or “snuggly scented” soaps and lotions and they turned out just fine.  Eat organic as much as possible but don’t stress if you can’t do this all the time.  Stay informed and do what you can in staggered steps.  You’re more likely to stay the course if you don’t get overwhelmed. 

The working mom in me sometimes make me feel like I have to over-compensate for keeping my kids safe since I’m not around to do so during the work day and it doesn’t help that my job is publishing health information about chronic disease.  But for the most part I try to digest the information, make a judgment call and take it one step at a time.

Do you have any tips or suggestions to deal with the scary news? Or ways to avoid the bad plastic, the chemicals et al?

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