The How To, Part two - The cranky Baby

Wouldn’t it be just too dreamy if I actually knew the answer to soothing a cranky baby? Well, I might be on the right track with my Baby B; I know a lot of his moodiness comes from his sensitivity, both physical and emotional. The emotional fussiness I just have to deal with as best I can and be as patient and in-humanly possible until he’s able to communicate his needs better. But with the skin thing I can take pre-emptive action, and I think I have seen a brighter future already!

Just a reminder; Baby B is allergic to animal dander, eggs, peanuts and occassionally to his brother too. The eggs and peanuts are a breeze to eliminate. I am a perfectly good cook and quite imaginative too. I also know how to read ingredients, so we simply have an egg/peanut free house. That’s that. The animal dander...well, we are vacuuming constantly and brushing the cats even more than usual. My cats now resemble a sleek panther and his overweight white panther brother, and the carpets are bright and fluffy. My DH says he likes to vacuum, so I let him do it.

An aside: did I tell y’all about my mother and the vacuuming? No? Well, get this. My mother asked me to come by one day because my sister was going to be in town. Now my mother has a cat, with loooong hair, and a collie dog, also with really long hair. Added to the long hair, this poor dog has this chronic case of galloping dandruff/seborrhea. Most of the time he has a big bald patch on his back and these yellowish flakes of skin just fall off him when you get too close. It’s really nasty, but he’s a nice dog, and it’s not his fault. He deserves my pity more than my censure. Because of the dog bits all over the house I asked Mother Dear if she would be so kind as to vacuum before we came over. She replied she might not have the time. This conversation was on a Tuesday and the plan was to meet on a Saturday. She also has a housekeeper, who comes by on Tuesdays and Fridays. MD’s solution to the baby’s allergies was, “Just keep the kid in the dining room. It has a tile floor, so there's less fur in there.” Umm, in case you hadn’t noticed, he’s two, he is usually cheek by jowl with his brother, and they are passionately involved in everything. It would drive him wild to be kept in one room while his brother and his two cousins got to frolic from dining room to kitchen to living room and back again. Note: my parents’ house is kind of big. They have a separate wing, behind a door, of two bedrooms, a living room and a storage area, plus a bathroom. The cat would be perfectly happy roughing it in these four rooms for an afternoon. I suggested that she keep the cat in the other part of the house; he’s no stranger to this wing, his litter box is usually in the storage area, as is his food. “Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary…it would be hard on the poor cat,” replied MD. Okay, I am supposed to keep my baby (not just some “kid” off the street, but your own grandchild) shut in one room for an afternoon because you don’t want to upset your cat, nor do you want to run a vacuum. Okay, that’s fine. We did not pay a visit.

But MY home is shining: I feel the cleaning is helping, but the real breakthrough has been the sodium lauryl sulfate free bathing products.

Since I decided to go au naturelle, wink wink, I decided to wash his clothes and to wash him in the most natural products as I could find. I have Ecover laundry soap for him, which reduces his itchies and stops him from trying to pull his clothes off so much, but the REAL find of the day was on drugstore dot com. I was filling a prescription (yes! RX on line! No more double stroller in the pharmacy!) and I saw this concoction called California Baby. It was touted as all natural and able to soothe a cranky baby and a crabby mother in one fell swoop. I got some and wow, oh wow! It works.

If you have a baby who is allergic to eggs or has eczema, this stuff is da bomb. The two kinds we like best, so far, are Super Sensitive and Overtired and Cranky. Both contain essential oils, and both have aloe vera, chamomile, Vitamins E and A. This is all really good stuff. I also got some handmade soap at a farmer’s market, made by a teensy company called Voda. The Voda soaps are also made with essential oils. They come in hand cut bars and are made with oils of avocado, almond, comfrey and calendula, all essential for babies who have eczema.

For the past few nights, after Baby B had a bath with his California Baby bubble bath and had his hair washed with his Voda Soap, we have dried him with his washed in Ecover towel, applied his Earthworm Eczema Skin Salve and gave him dinner. We have had some nice evenings and he has been going to bed happy.

BUT – and here comes the miracle - he also wakes up happy, eats breakfast happy and wow, stays happy pretty much all day. Oh, he has his tantrums, as does Baby A, which is normal, but they were really mild by comparison to how he was before, and pretty short too. Really, it is like he is a different baby. If I have figured out why he was so awful, if I have relieved some of his allergies, if I have solved some of his problems, well, Golly, I am such a good mother...