Natural and Frugal Care is Best for Your Baby

I was the oldest of eight kids, ('way back when it was ok to have eight kids) and I got my share of caring for the little ones. Changing diapers, rocking them to sleep and keeping them entertained were chores for everyone. With that many kids, there was a baby in diapers nearly all the time for many years and frugal baby care wasn't called that, but that's what it certainly was.

Diapers were washed in a wringer washer and hung in the sun and wind to dry. When baby made a mess, there was an ample supply of clean, white rags at hand. They were washed and hung to dry in the sun and wind, too. We never heard of baby wipes or disposable diapers.

There were no middle of the night bottle warming episodes; mother's milk is always the right temperature, and besides, it's frugal. Back then, mothers who fed their babies milk in a bottle either had physical problems... or mental ones. We believed in nature and reality; we believed that the human body could take care of itself for the most part, and so we believed that a mother's milk was made for a mother's baby.

When the little ones became interested in trying solid food, (no doctor's rules about 'when they were ready') they were offered boiled, mashed potatoes. Fork mashed green beans. Real egg yolk. Oatmeal, pulverized then cooked. Commercial jars of baby food were expensive alternatives only for 'rich folks', who, in our minds, likely didn't even eat green beans and potatoes.

How times have changed.

And how we have bought into the Madison Avenue mentality yet again. If they had their way, we'd all be feeling guilty for not buying our babies complete new wardrobes and shelves of 'baby food' and cases of disposable diapers and... well, you know. And 'way before they're born, even.

Let's shatter a few Madison Avenue myths.

- Clean white cloths, or rags cut from just about any old thing, makes more sense than buying or even making 'baby wipes'... those special throwaway bits that can irritate baby's skin with soaps and perfumes. Wash the cloths with bleach and detergent, rinse with a quarter cup of vinegar in the rinse water, and hang them in the sun to dry. (You have my permission to throw away the yuckiest!) They'll be safer than a box of wipes that set, wet and warm, after your bacteria covered hands have touched them.

- Juice especially for baby (at three times the cost)? Where does it come from? Baby apples? Gentle peaches? If regular apple juice is too strong for baby, dilute it. If it needs pasteurizing, boil it.

- By the same token, where does that baby food come from? I'd venture to say it starts out as the same food you eat! Just don't use salt or any form or fat - butter, vegetable oil, shortening are all no-no's at this point. (Although my daughter cut her first tooth on fried bacon.)

When feeding your baby real food, be sure it's mashed completely. Remove even very small lumps or strings of food which can choke a baby. His digestive system isn't ready to handle it yet, either.

- It's not necessary to sew your own diapers, but it is necessary to use cloth diapers unless you have more money than you know what to do with. Do the math, as they say. A dozen cloth diapers cost around twenty to eighty dollars and they last until the baby is potty trained. It's much cheaper to make your own, and diapers don't take any magical cloth - it just has to be soft and absorbent. So what if it takes four dozen or more? How many times could you reuse a disposable diaper?

Wash diapers like you do the rags, in bleach and detergent, then use vinegar in the rinse to neutralize the bleach. Hang diapers in the sun to dry. Ultraviolet rays from the sun kills bacteria efficiently. Don't believe the myth that the heat from your dryer will do the same. If anything, bacteria will thrive in that warm dark environment.

- Mother's milk is not only cheaper, it's preventative medicine. Babies raised on it are more easily weaned and sooner. They don't have digestive problems that plague bottle fed babies (constipation, etc) and they're generally healthier, according to most studies.

- Did you know that baby oil is nothing more than mineral oil with fragrance added? Fragrance that could irritate your babies' skin at twice the price?

- Or that corn starch is preferable to baby powder, money wise and purity wise? Baby powder is talcum powder, again with added fragrance which can irritate baby's skin. Corn starch is pure enough for food.

- Baby lotion is more water than anything else. The 'anything else' is what sometimes hurts your baby's skin more than it helps. Normally, baby skin doesn't need lotion, but if it does occasionally, use pure olive oil instead. It's not cheap cost wise, but used sparingly and only when it's needed, one small bottle should last longer than your baby is a baby, which is more than you can say for baby lotion.

Bottom line? Raise your baby the natural, frugal, healthy, way and you'll save money many times over in ways that's hard to anticipate.