Safe Skin Routine for Pregnancy
Let me tell you something, ladies!
It is a BITCH to find super natural, super safe things to use when you’re pregnant ( and not). You buy teratogenically tested line of pregnancy products and then a few weeks later, after hours of research, you realize that while they might be free of teratogens ( substances that cause birth defects), they are DEFINITELY not free from other potentially harmful toxins that didn’t make it into the teratogen list (yet), or don’t necessarily cause birth defect but have been linked with cancer or such (yikes!).
What pregnant woman in her right mind, who possesses this information would say:”Potentially carcinogenic? That’s all right! I’ll be fine and my baby will too”
So after I discovered the Good Guide ( a website that rates products based on their safety) or EWG Skin Deep, I was introduced to a whole world of “causes toxicity” and “developmental problems” and this and that. It didn’t stop there though. Good Guide apparently thinks that some ingredients are just fine, while there’s information out there about these that contradicts that. EWG Skin Deep Database is a bit more reliable in my opinion.
So there I was… on a QUEST to find the safest products I could find.
I think everyone at this point knows that parabens are bad, so I instantly excluded any product that had parabens in them ( look for methylparaben, and other words containing “paraben”). They are preservatives used in a lot of products and it’s just really really bad ( don’t want to take my word for it? google it). The sneaky part is tat fragrance/perfum might contain parabens as well, but due to trade laws, companies don’t have to disclose it.
Then I learned about Sodium Laurel Sulfate ( SLS- a chemical so strong they use it to effectively clean oil grease off the engines) – so there went all the products that had SLS ( and that’s pretty much EVERYTHING – look at your hand soap, under the first or second ingredient)…
So there I was spending hours checking drugstore.com and amazon.com for the best products according to good guide and then checking their ingredients against a few more lists.
Every time I’d think I found something, I would then discover another preservative that causes cancer or what not. And while I might be ok with a small amount of that product for myself, how could I possibly know what it could do to a tiny baby whose IMPORTANT cells are constantly dividing.
At one point I thought I found the perfect line of products: Aubrey Organics
So finally, here’s what I came up with. It’s THE BEST line up I could put together. There were some other products that might have been just as good or maybe better, but they were $26-40 for a bottle of shampoo and that’s just ridiculous.
Also there were certain things I wasn’t concerned with, like warnings about ingredients that might be connected with some skin sensitivity or something like that. I basically went by what could possibly harm the baby, and not by the fact that “lemon oil makes you sneeze” ( joking of course).
Note: I also checked them against potentially harmful herbs during pregnancy.
So here is what I use now and where you can buy them:
1. HAIR TREATMENT
Burt’s Bees Pre-Shampoo hair treatment
It’s a super nice smelling avocado pre-wash. Not sure if it helps but it doubles as a really good hair product to use in dry hair and for fly aways.
2. CONDITIONER
Alba Botanica Gardenia Hydrating Hair Conditioner
Smells DELICIOUS!!! Works really well, too, compared to other organic conditioners I’ve used.
3. BODY WASH
Tom’s of Maine Natural Body Wash
Took me a while to find a reasonably cheap and safe wash. Lavender is very calming and the wash itself is, well, a good wash.
or
More recently I discovered the most amazing line of healthy skin care, Lavanila. They carry a healthy deodorant, healthy body wash, healthy body butter and even a healthy fragrance. I would definitely recommend that line over anything else that is non-pregnancy specific.
4. STRETCHMARKS OIL
Mother’s Special Blend
At first I was SUPER turned off by the smell. To me, it didn’t smell like cookies AT ALL. Plus I don’t like oil based moisturizers.
But after 3 months of searching for a moisturizer that didn’t have every single bad ingredient in the book, I gave up. This has no preservative, no chemicals,nothing but oils.
That is until I found Mama Mio Tummy Oil. This is by far the best pregnancy product out there and it smells heavenly. You can read more about it here
5. Burt’s Bees More Moisture Raspberry & Brazil Nut Shampoo
6. Burt’s Bees Super Shiny Grapefruit & Sugar Beet Conditioner
7. Weleda Almond Soothing Facial Cream
Facial creams ( along with body creams) was the hardest category to find something safe in. If it doesn’t have some harmful chemicals, it will definitely have Aloe Vera. While I love Aloe Vera in general, for pregnancy it’s one of the herbs to be careful with ( an emmenagogue (mimics hormones), teratogen and muscle relaxant). I don’t know at which point it can cause harm, but like I said before, I am not taking any chances ( a small sacrifice to make). At first I got Dr Hauschka Rose cream, but I just didn’t get into its God-awful smell and too thick texture ( was impossible to spread it out). Weleda is perfect, light but rich, smells amazing and is perfectly safe.
8. Tom’s of Maine Clean and Gentle Care
Surprisingly, toothpaste, the one thing we put into our mouths, is full of SLS. That’s pretty much how it “cleans” and foams. So we both switched to a SLS free version. Doesn’t foam as well as a traditional toothpaste, but it makes me feel 100% better, not putting a chemical that they use to clean oil grease off the engines into my mouth.
For anything else you might need check out the safest pregnancy skin care brand (I checked their ingredients personally)- Mama Mio. You can read my review here
_______________________
We also changed our laundry detergent and dishwasher soap and detergent to a greener brand.
Hope this was helpful and will save you some agonizing over what to buy and hours of research.
Tags: organic products for pregnancy, safe body wash, safe facial cream, safe facial products, safe personal care for pregnancy, safe pregnancy care, safe pregnancy products, Safe products, safe shampoos, safe toothpaste, SLS-free
Trackback from your site.
Comments (35)
Tara
| #
love it!!
Reply
Carly
| #
Can I just tell you, as a woman slated to TTC soon, that I am so grateful that you did all of this research and put together this lineup so that I don’t have to? Seriously.
Reply
Elena @ Art of Making a Baby
| #
Thank you, Carly! I was hoping the hours spent on looking for products would help someone else as well.
Reply
Elena C.
| #
What an amazing job you’ve done Heloon!
Thank you!
Reply
Megan
| #
Do you know if these brands have anything harmful in them?
I use the Tea Tree Line from the Body Shop (cleaner, toner and moisturizer), Abba brand shampoo/conditioner.
I love Albi products as well, but can’t use Burts Bees unfortunately, because I am allergic to bees/bees wax products. I also don’t like the greasy feel of Mother’s Special Blend, but, it works. :-/
Reply
Elena @ Art of Making a Baby
| #
Depending on which exact products from Body shop you’re using, they range for pretty bad to pretty good. Go to goodguide.com and type in the exact products you’re using, then go the the health part and read up on the chemicals that it contains that cause issues. Good guide doesn’t consider sodium laurel sulfate dangerous per se, but i saw most body shop products have it ( most traditional products do), so read a bit about SLS and see if it something that concerns you.
Also here’s a link to all known teratogens: http://www.purdue.edu/rem/ih/terat.htm use the find feature ( ctrl+F) to enter the ingredients to see if any of them match up. As long as there’re no teratogens, you should be relatively safe, but I don’t even want other harmful chemicals in my body while I’m pregnant or breastfeeding.
Try other Albi products, most of them are good.
As far as Burt’s Bees, do ALL their products contain bees wax? I don’t believe they do.
Reply
Heather @CritterChronicles
| #
Just wanted to let you know I recently found many sources online that talk about the Oil Cleansing Method for cleansing the face and neck. I’ll let you do a web search for it (my first intro to it was Simple Mom but there’s a lot out there including a website by that name), but I started using a combination of e-v-olive and castor oils to cleanse my face, and virgin coconut oil to moisturize at night and so far it’s working great (I just rinse with warm water and apply a sunscreen in the AM). It sounds counter-intuitive to put oil ON your skin – particularly since I’ve been dealing, mostly unsuccessfully, with acne and combination oily/dry skin for the past 18 years – but the way I understand it is when you strip the oil from your skin with acne products or just regular cleansers your skin has to work harder to replenish it, and causes overproduction. It’s actually a neverending cycle.
The castor oil is anti-inflammatory and also has healing and cleansing properties, and the olive oil will help restore moisture. I know castor oil is sometimes used to help induce labor, but that’s a bit of an old wives’ tale and also refers to the consumption of it, not when used externally.
Anyway, I’ve read about the trouble you’ve had with your skin in the first trimester (it was always terrible for my in my 1st tri, but then cleared up by the 2nd trimesters in both my pregnancies) and thought this might be something else to try. Plus it’s about as natural as you can get!
Reply
Elena @ Art of Making a Baby
| #
Oh wow that’s very helpful! I’ll definitely look into it. And yes, the thought of putting OIL on my face freaks me out, since I am breaking out like crazy, but I see the point in what you’re saying.
Reply
Megan
| #
Awesome website! Thanks!
Reply
Irina
| #
TOM’s has been my favorite tooth paste brand for years. I notice a difference in taste (natural vs chemical) immediately when I have to use Colgate or any other brand.
BB’s stuff I’m not so crazy about, except for their marvelous carrot cream.
Reply
Irina
| #
BTW, thought you might like this anti-stretch marks cream. It’s got great reviews and my friend is raving about it : http://www.sephora.com/browse/product.jhtml;jsessionid=LLBW1MCKBZNQMCV0KQRQIGQ?id=P268005&categoryId=C23110#BVRRWidgetID
Reply
Elena @ Art of Making a Baby
| #
Oh no, this one is strictly off limits for pregnancy and breastfeeding, so no way! It’s only good for existing stretchmarks but like I said you can’t even use it after birth if you’re breastfeeding. Otherwise i heard it’s wonderful!
Reply
Nikole
| #
Have you checked out Lush: http://www.lush.com/. I love their shampoo bars and their skin products. And they don’t sit around in plastic all day. Their shower jelly smells amazing.
Reply
Elena @ Art of Making a Baby
| #
I just did. They look super cute but they all have parabens and SLS. SLS I can live with in certain products but parabens are just really bad and most organic products don’t use them anymore.
Unfortunately handmade no longer means good, organic or safe :(
Reply
telegraph_ave
| #
I wish I knew this information earlier… I’ve just perused the box of my recently bought Clarins facial moisturizer and found out that (“suprisingly”) it contains SLS amoung other quite suspicious stuff. Not to mention that it costed me about four times more than most of the organic moisturizers would… Oh well, at least now I know what to look for in cosmetics in the future, so thanks a lot!
Reply
Elena @ Art of Making a Baby
| #
I’m sure there’s a lot more bad stuff in there than just SLS. Check out good guide and find your products there. And jsut make sure you don’t use anything with parabens, whether you’re pregnant or not.
Reply
Ludivine
| #
Hi
I really like all the research you’ve done. It’s helpful! I saw the korres brand at sephora: http://www.sephora.com/browse/product.jhtml?id=P116805&categoryId=B70#moreInfo that is supposed to be natural. No paraben and sls. I could not find this product on goodguide.com.
Also there 2 or 3 books for natural skin care that is only using things from your fridge and pantry. Example facial with honey, skin scrub with olive oil and sugar. Mask with grape, lemon and egg white…. I can give you the links if anyone is interested. I made my own stretch mark prevention cream with cocoa butter, coconut oil, shea butter, etc. I’ll check more about sls but I’d like a trustworthy website to get my info from. Any idea?
Reply
Elena @ Art of Making a Baby
| #
Yes I’d definitely like the links to natural skin care.
I looked at Korres- it doesn’t seem bad. There are a few ingredients I’d like to research but none of the ones I know are bad. Good find! Too bad it’s not exactly cheap.
Also I don’t have a link for SLS info for you. Just google it- I’m sure you’ll find smth reputable .
Reply
Elena @The Art of Making a BAby
| #
For anyone interested, I just found a great website to do your research: http://www.ewg.org/skindeep/
And this ( http://planetgreen.discovery.com/fashion-beauty/teenage-girls-avoid-cosmetics.html ) talks about the main things to avoid.
Reply
The Art of Making a Baby » Blog Archive Pregnancy Must Haves and Photo Recap (2nd Trimester Issue) | The Art of Making a Baby_The Art of Making a Baby
| #
[...] harmful chemicals.I did find a good product in each necessary category and you can see the line up here. However, the issue was while they were 100% safe and good for you, I wasn’t crazy about how [...]
Reply
Sarah
| #
May I ask — what do you use for hand soap? Apologies if this is covered elsewhere in your blog. Did you have to switch to anything new? Thanks, your info is very helpful.
Reply
Elena @The Art of Making a Baby
| #
After not being able to find anything without either aloe or SLS, I resorted to using the organic hard soaps from Whole foods. I did the same with my face soap. I’m actually liking it.
Reply
Sarah
| #
Ah, thank you so much for the reply! I’ve been looking into these stupid soaps all day. I think I’ve decided on this one — http://www.drbronner.com/DBMS/SD0904/OrganicShikakaiUnscentedSoapHalfGallonBulkRefill.htm — but I really like your hard soap solution!
Reply
Elena @The Art of Making a Baby
| #
Oh that’s the same brand of soap I bought for the baby. Completely forgot about them. I only discovered them recently. That’s a good option.
I’m strangely digging using hard soap for hands for some reason, so I’ll continue doing that past the pregnancy.
Reply
Ashley
| #
I highly recommend checking out Earth Mama Angel Baby for you and baby! I also really like Episencial for me and my toddler. Another great site is http://chemicaloftheday.squarespace.com/ . As much as I love the Skin Deep site from EWG, some chemicals are bashed as horrible when they really aren’t due to how they achieve the ratings. The studies are often skewed or categorized wrong. That’s why I love Chemical of the Day!
Reply
Elle
| #
Hi,
I’m new to being pregnant and new to this site. Thank you for all your research and sharing it with all of us! Did you ever find a safe sunscreen?
Thanks!
Elle
Reply
Elena @The Art of Making a Baby
| #
Hi, Ella. Any with Zinc Oxide as am active ingredient will do.
Reply
Lily McDowall
| #
I know this is an old post, but when searching for a good shampoo to use I noticed that they all have sodium chloride in them (including the Burt’s bee’s ones you posted). I have no idea what sodium chloride is (excuse my ignorance!) but it flags up on the teratogen website you linked to. All the natural brands I normally use have it listed in their ingredients…
Reply
Elena @The Art of Making a Baby
| #
Honestly, I have no clue what SC is but Burt’s bees was the best I found even though I don’t like how it cleans :(
Reply
Sarah
| #
FYI sodium chloride is just table salt.
Reply
Darcy
| #
Isn’t sodium chloride, salt?
Reply
Mary
| #
Thanks for that list! What do you know about Earth Mama, Angel Baby products? I’m newly pregnant and have been looking at some of those skin care products.
Thanks!
Mary
Reply
Elena @The Art of Making a Baby
| #
Yes! I haven’t looked at their ingredient list though, but they seem like a reputable company! Congrats on your pregnancy :)
Reply
Sara
| #
Thanks for this post. I’ve been doing research for months and am surprised that I haven’t come across your site until now. I switched to all natural products several months before trying to conceive, but I didn’t realize how many essential oils and herbs should be avoided in pregnancy until now. So I’m starting my research again, 7 weeks into my pregnancy. I was also surprised to learn upon closer scrutiny that my Kiss My Face hand soap that I’ve been using had retinyl palmitate in it!
This past weekend I switched to an unscented french milled vegetable glycerin soap from Whole Foods but then just saw on the Teratogen link you posted that palm oil is on the list. What bar soap are you using?
Also, do you have any recommendations for deodorant/anti-perspirant and mouthwash? I’ve been using Tom’s of Maine’s Original Care Unscented Deodorant and their Wicked Fresh Cool Mountain mint Mouthwash, but there are some questionable ingredients in both.
Finally, I’ve given up face soap altogether and am using a product called Magic Mitt by Jane Iredale, a cosmetic company that I recently switched to and adore. It removes makeup and cleanses without any cleanser. You should check it out.
Reply
Elena @The Art of Making a Baby
| #
It’s so hard to find perfect products. You end up just using the lesser of all evils.
I too used a bar soap from WF, not sure about palm oil.
As far as deodorant, I’d highly recommend Lavanila.
I used Tom’s for mouthwash as well.
Or you can make your own!
Reply