Transcript: Baby Steps to Chemical-Free Cleaning

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Parent Savers
Baby Steps to Chemical-Free Cleaning

[Theme Music]

JOHNER RIEHL: There are many reasons why we all try to keep a clean house and many products, designed to help us do so. But surprisingly few people are aware of the fact that using many of the common household products using harsh and toxic chemicals to make your house clean, can have detrimental and even dangerous effect on your family. Today we are talking all about chemical free cleaning.

[Theme Music/Intro]

JOHNER RIEHL: Welcome everybody to Parent Savers broadcasting from the Birth Education Center of San Diego. Parent Savers is weekly online on the Go Support Group for parents from then newborn years through kindergarten. I’m you host, Johner Riehl. Thanks again, all of our loyal listeners! You join us week in and week out. Thanks also to those of you who are listening for the firs time. As you may know, you can join our Parent Savers Club and receive access to special bonus content after each new show plus special giveaways of discounts from time to time.

If you haven’t already, please make sure to download the free Parent Savers app available on Android and iTunes market place and you’ll automatically have access to all of the great parenting advice conversations we have every week and if you are a member of our Parent Savers Club, you can access all of you great bonus contents trough there as well.

So before star today’s conversation, let’s meet everyone who is here in the room with us, so you guys, know who you are listening to. This is Johner Riehl, I’m the host, and I have three boys – seven years old Quinner, five years old Whitaker and two years old Zyler, which we’ve just realized in the last episode, seems to be the root of all our problems. Every time we do an episode, I’m like “The two years old does this! The two years old does this!” Also in scene is Mj.

MJ FISHER: Yeah, Mj Fisher, producer of The Boob Group, the other show, that we have here, and I have a son that is two and a half. His name is Jason.

ERIN ESTEVES: And I’m Erin Esteves, a producer of the show also known as OG Mama Cita and I have one little boy who is two-ish.

COLINA COROTHERS: I’m Colina Corothers. I have one little boy. He’s eight months and his name is Adam.

JOHNER RIEHL: And Jamelle is on the phone.

JAMELLE RYAN: And my name is Jamelle Ryan and I’m with the A Wholesome Home and I have a lovely little girl who is about two and a half.

JOHNER RIEHL: Okay, great. Well thanks for joining us, everyone.

[Theme Music]

JOHNER RIEHL: Before we start today’s conversation, from time to time, we like to look at news headlines, topics that are in the news, that are interesting to parents, that can stimulate kind of interesting conversation and this one is kind of interesting, because the reaction we’ve been even talking about before hand, was kind of on the opposite side of defense. And the headline is “Are we going to ban kids and the best possible way of paying someone else to baby-sit them”. We are from www.babel.com . When you are there, your family and yet you don’t have bring the whole family if you want to be there on February 7th, the Olive Garden is offering parents the opportunity to dine without their kids, because the restaurant will foot the bill for babysitting. According to Fox News, they’ve got a children’s activity center named “My gym” which will the place where the kids will play while their parents eat and all the moms and the dads have to do is pickup their kids after dinner, sure that all of the Olive Garden receipts in order to take advantage of the free babysitting. What are you guys think of that? So they are banging kids, but it’s in a good way. And it all will happen if you show up with a kid.

ERIN ESTEVES: Is the “My gym” right next door to the Olive Garden?

JOHNER RIEHL: I would imagine. There is lot of things next door to the Olive Garden.

MJ FISHER: I think some parents will really love it. I know I have a friend that has three kids. They would drop these kids in a second.

ERIN ESTEVES: You do it; it gets done at like Keia and other places, right? Or even at the Whayhi where they have the child cared there. So heck yeah, why not.

JOHNER RIEHL: But I wonder if this would appeal then to people who kind of get frustrated by kids. Maybe you would love going to the Olive Garden, but are so mad at...

[All Laughing]

JOHNER RIEHL: That’s you night to go. But then you are taking it away from the parents and they should go without kids.

ERIN ESTEVES: Yeah. I’m kind of torn, because I feel that if people who are oversensitive to children and social settings, I’m frankly really bothered by it, because I feel like there are just smaller parts of out society and they should stay home.

JOHNER RIEHL: Right, so there is the flipside of it like why do you have to get detached the kids.

MJ FISHER: And they were kids once, those people that get annoyed, like don’t you remember that you were a child too once?

ERIN ESTEVES: Yeah, and sometimes adult behavior is very annoying. I mean, you know, somebody at the table next to you maybe had a few to many or they are load, or they just are very obnoxious in what they are saying.

JOHNER RIEHL: But for those that listened to our recent episode at Valentine's Day about spicing up your marriage after kids - sometimes it's nice to remember that you are a wife and that you are a husband.

ERIN ESTEVES: Oh, absolutely.

MJ FISHER: Yeah. I think maybe if we were banning kids out of it, that would be..

[everybody talks]

COLINA COROTHER: My first reaction was pretty bad.

JOHNER RIEHL: Yeah, but then when you found about it you were like "Hey that's cool" . You know another interesting thing though - we drop out kids of to care to go some parent meeting at school and the four year old like bags us to go back. He is like "I love going to that place. I want to go!".

MJ FISHER: That's awesome.

JOHNER RIEHL: Sometimes it's not a punishment for the kids that you are tearing them apart to get them have fun and get them experienced.

ERIN ESTEVES: Well, I like the fact that they offered a solution whether or not there is one of these locations next-door to the Olive Garden that you frequent.

JOHNER RIEHL: Yeah, I think that's might be this specific Olive Garden now that you mentioned it. But maybe we can start a grass root effort to get it in Olive Gardens around the country. Maybe we can pick a different restaurant.

ERIN ESTEVES: Yes.

[everybody laughs]

[Music Theme]

JOHNER RIEHL: Todays topic is Baby Steps to Chemical Free Cleaning. Today we are talking with Jamelle Ryan who is with "A wholesome home" and it's important that we say "A wholesome home" and not "A wholesome home", because those kind of trend to blend together. Welcome, Jamelle.

JAMELLE RYAN: Thank you so much for having me.

JOHNER RIEHL: So what inspired to have a chemical free household?

JAMELLE RYAN: Well you know it was interesting - when I became pregnant for the first time in my life it literally changed my entire prospective and I began at that time of the journey, a holistic living path. So that holistic living path touched every point in my life - everything from what was I eating putting in my body, everything I was putting on my body, everything I would put on my baby and then what I used to clean my home. It became my focus and inspired me to provide to my family a wholesome home.

JOHNER RIEHL: Yeah, it's amazing how much things can change. How your whole word csn change.

ERIN ESTEVES: I'm not alone.

JAMELLE RYAN: You are not alone.

ERIN ESTEVES: I'm not alone

MJ FISHER: In a good way though. It's so awesome.

JOHNER RIEHL: Oh, it's amazing.

MJ FISHER: I mean I would never change anything that we've changed. It's like so great, including the cleaning.

JOHNER RIEHL: Right. And so what are, I mean, some of the steps to took to get to where you are now?

ERIN ESTEVES: Because it's pretty drastic, you know. We are all so trained to think that we need these very specific, very harsh products to get things quote on quote clean, you know - sterile.

COLINA COROTHERS: Kill the germs, kill them all.

JOHNER RIEHL: Oh yeah, definitely. Even when we buy school supplies we have to get specific products that the teachers request. Like we want light-salt disinfecting wipes. Like it's not even matter if (inaudible) product, you know, but it's great that they don't need just to disinfect things, they need to disinfect things with this specific product.

ERIN ESTEVES: Yeah, this is the only way that we are going to get it. Clean.

JAMELLE RYAN: And I think that a lot to it is in terms of sometimes too a lot of our families used as we were growing up. I mean a lot of these product were created you know, back when we were kids and so our parents started using them, our moms specifically, and it was just like "Oh that's what my mom used and I know our house is always so clean" and I have to use the same stuff, not realizing what it would do to us to us.

ERIN ESTEVES: Yeah we need to smell, you know.

JOHNER RIEHL: In all that aspects of parenting, that is such a tough thing to break free of or at least to identify as you are doing things because that's how you remember it.

ERIN ESTEVES: Right, that' what constitutes clean as a fit that smells in a certain way or...

JOHNER RIEHL: Sure sometimes that person in some of our cases might be judging if things are clean in the house and thats what many of us are trying to live up as well.

ERIN ESTEVES: So what were the first steps you took?

JAMELLE RYAN: For me, I think, my actual first step, when it comes to cleaning the household was when I literally just started doing a research. I researched everything I could possibly find on general products that I could use, that I knew were safe and non toxic and if they really were going to clean my house. And then I just started experimenting.

JOHNER RIEHL: That sounds awesome!

ERIN ESTEVES: Yeah! It also sounds time-consuming, you know, so I think that you have to spend that time up front.

JOHNER RIEHL: Well, but I think yes and no, right. I think that’s really the point, the idea that “Oh I’m just going to snap my fingers and all of the sudden be chemical free. You do need to kind of experiment and see what works. And it actually can be... It’s not immediate results, but probably it really doesn’t take that long to start figuring some great things out.

ERIN ESTEVES: And we have Pinterest now, which is…

MJ FISHER: And also what do you do with all the chemicals that had, you know?

ERIN ESTEVES: I gave them to my neighbors.

MJ FISHER: That’s one of my things like “I’m going to use this because I’m going to just use it up” But I’m not that way anymore. Everything is like sitting there, so you know…

ERIN ESTEVES: I gave it away.

MJ FISHER: You gave it to other people. That’s crunchy.

JOHNER RIEHL: They don’t care about as much.

[Everybody laughs]

ERIN ESTEVES: Aren’t too concerned with procreating, so…

[Everybody laughs]

ERIN ESTEVES: That’s fairly win.

JOHNER RIEHL: So let’s talk about some specific recipes. Let’s get into, you know, some of the fun things that you’ve discovered, Jamelle, and that you’ve tested and some of us here in studio have tested as well.

ERIN ESTEVES: So actually if I could jump in, I gave everyone a few different recipes to test. Colina and Mj tried some of these and I have also. So, Colina, was there one in particular?

COLINA COROTHERS: Yeah, I did the all-purpose cleaner and used it all over the place and it was good. I’ve made a rookie mistake though. There is baking soda and vinaigrette in that and I was thinking “Oh maybe if I do…” I didn’t go by steps that were on there and I was like “Well if I watered on the vinaigrette maybe that will be not as bad, because of the baking soda and then I know that “pfuuu”” And it turns out that’s not the way to do it, because even though it’s watered down I had just a volcano of cleaner all over my counter.

[Everybody laughs]

COLINA COROTHERS: And I panicked and I tried to put a lit on it which made it worse. It was an exiting experience. I wish my son was a little older because then he could have had some fun with that.

JOHNER RIEHL: Next time we’ll use go pros when we have this…

[Everybody laughs]

COLINA COROTHERS: So do the baking on the vinaigrette first together because they are so little. Don’t touch the water. No, but it worked really good and loved the fact that I could use it, I mean. All-purpose is very accurate. Even that we have a glass top stove, where we live, and everything streaks on it except for this really awful, really chemically glass top stove cleaner, that we were given and that did not streak, at all. And I was kind of worried, because there is like a little bit of soap in it. But yeah, that cleaned it really well and there are no streaks and there is no smell and my eyes didn’t burn. It was a good experience. I liked it.

ERIN ESTEVES: Yeah! So will you continue to use this?

COLINA COROTHERS: I think so, yeah. I’m going to have to figure out something with a spray bottle though, because I don’t know if pressure or something in the bottle that I have, it would like kind of build up and it wouldn’t want to squirt.

ERIN ESTEVES: Well, in my own experience I had to go trough several different types of spray bottles.

COLINA COROTHERS: Yeah.

JAMELLE RYAN: So did I.

ERIN ESTEVES: Because some of them aren’t so great. And eventually you’ll find the one that will work for you.

JAMELLE RYAN: You know the one that I found that works really great is at home depot or any of those types of stores. They have what they call like a heavy duty spray bottle and it’s actually made for heavy duty chemicals which is kind of funny, but the fact that it’s made for the heavy duty chemicals, the cleaning supplies that you put in, the ingredients in the bottle won’t affect the spray. So it’s actually a really great spray.

JOHNER RIEHL: That is really funny that that’s the spray bottle.

ERIN ESTEVES: And I think that it really boils down to suction. Is what it is. I think it has to do with the tube that leads down to the bottom of the bottle. How well it is secured with the upper part of the bottle. Because the bottles that I ended up getting, I got from a restaurant supply store. So yeah, then those work fabulous too because they also have the measurements one them and stuff. I don’t know what they are doing with them in restaurants, but… So Jamelle, what would you add to the all-purpose cleaner?

JAMELLE RYAN: There is a couple of essential oils that I actually, I kind of trade of and I’d add them to a very similar recipe. My all-purpose cleaner has the same ingredients. The only difference is instead of the dean soap, I actually use Doctor Bruner’s all-purposed soap, but still the white vinaigrette and the baking soda and the warm water as key to kind of melt everything together. And then I actually add a couple different essential oils. One of them is just straight lemon essential oil. I love the flagrance and not only that, but it’s extremely disinfecting and antibacterial and cleansing. And then there is also a blend of essential oils that I use called “On Guard” and it’s specifically sold by the brand of essential oil (inaudible) and this blend contains wild orange, clove bed, cinnamon bark, eucalyptus radiate and rosemary. And that combination is a powerhouse of cleaning.

ERIN ESTEVES: That’s hardcore!

JAMELLE RYAN: It’s super hardcore. It’s hardcore antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral. It’s a powerful disincentive, it’s purifying. I mean, it’s actually amazing and it smells pretty damn good too.

ERIN ESTEVES: Well, I’m definitely going to try this, because what I do for my all purpose cleaner is I actually take white vinaigrette and orange peal and I will soak the orange peal in the white vinaigrette for a couple of weeks and then so all of the essential oils from the orange peal go into the vinaigrette and then that’s what I use as my basis.

JAMELLE RYAN: So you are just castling you own essential oil.

ERIN ESTEVES: I am, I am.

JOHNER RIEHL: Will that work with kitties or does it have to be orange?

ERIN ESTEVES: I think the orange peal is sort of what would work. You could probably also do lemon peal.

JAMELLE RYAN: Or grapefruit. Grapefruit is another really great one. Any of the citrus. Lime as well.

JOHNER RIEHL: And here in Southern California like I feel like we all know a person that has one of those trees in their backyard. They are trying to get rid of those things.

ERIN ESTEVES: I know. Any time you go to the office or the doctor’s office or something there is always a bag of fruit on the counter.

JOHNER RIEHL: That’s a great reason to just take some and make your own oils to add to your cleaning supplies, because hey we all think “Alright am I going to make lemon bars?”

ERIN ESTEVES: And it doesn’t turn out to be a huge crafting project either, you know.

MJ FISHER: That’s actually what happened with me when I did a tub cleaner, so was the grapefruit and my girlfriend lives in Fallbrook and she has a huge grapefruit tree and she gave me like this and I love grapefruits, but she gave me a huge bag and so I’m giving them to friends and then this came up and I was like “Great! I’m going to be using the grapefruit.” So yeah I actually used it, I did it this morning, procrastinator that I am, but my husband was happy to clean my tub and I was super surprised that… Because at first you know how that little ring down at the bottom and it’s like orange and I’m like using it. I actually didn’t use kosher salt because I didn’t have kosher salt. I used regular salt, but it worked great and the scammer on the side of the tub was awesome. And then I had my son in there with me which is not the way we usually clean the bathroom, because of all the chemicals and usually we have to like open the window in there and not go in there for a while because of all the smell and everything, but was right there with me eating his breakfast, sitting on the toilet, while I was cleaning the tub. And like I said I was super impressed. It just looked awesome. It felt great.

ERIN ESTEVES: Well speaking of the tub, that’s one of the reasons that I started doing this, because there is nothing I can do to stop my kid from drinking the bathwater.

JAMELLE RYAN: I know exactly.

JOHNER RIEHL: Let’s take a quick break right here. We’ll be right back.

[Theme Music]

JOHNER RIEHL: Welcome back, everybody, to Parent Savers. Today we are talking to Jamelle Ryan who is with A Wholesome Home.

ERIN ESTEVES: Okay, so Jamelle, we are going to be talking a little bit about dusting sprays and about what could be safe on some of our more delicate furnishings and also what we can use on pretty much everything and anything. So we have a recipe for dusting spray that’s essentially vinaigrette, it has olive oil, lemon juice, vinegar and water. What would you add to that? How would you take care of your delicate furniture?

JAMELLE RYAN: You know, actually the lemon juice is a wonderful ingredient in this recipe. I would personally, instead of using the juice; I would just use the actual essential oil. You would probably need a lot less, the recipe calls for a teaspoon of lemon juice and I would probably use a few drops, maybe 2 to 3 drops of pure lemon essential oil. And lemon essential oil is going to help you, kind of, break up the syrup and the grease and any leftover stuff that you want to clean off of your furniture, as well as the dust.

ERIN ESTEVES: I had inherited a wooden table that had been owned by a smoker and I use the dusting spray to pull off all of that stink. Is there anything else that we could use, that might be a little, other than antibacterial but maybe anti-pest if we, for example have pets and we want to make sure that certain areas aren’t affected so much from them?

JAMELLE RYAN: Yes, for pest control one of the best essential oils for that is peppermint. It really helps to, kind of, detour all kinds of biting insects and pests of all kind, even spiders. But also with regards to the dusting spray specifically, there is another blend that’s called Purify and it contains various amounts of essential oils that have lemon, lime, pine, citronella, melaleuca and cilantro, and this is a very wonderful combination of oils because it is not only a disinfectant but it helps to actually purify the air as well. So specifically with your table, that you inherited, I would add this blend to the dusting spray recipe and it would take that smell of cigarettes smoke right out.

ERIN ESTEVES: Well, and I think, also that would broach the topic which is sometimes when we spray these aerosols, we can taste them or we can feel them in our lungs and they are not always that great for us.

MJ FISHER: Yeah, when you go natural, you know, holistic in your life, the chemicals and the products you used to use are, they really do affect you, you know, like your smell, even like my husband will, like, break out, like on his hands, like eczema, you know, just because it is just, we are just not used to it anymore and like the hand-me-down clothes that we will get from are families who aren’t as natural will, you know, have lots of fabrics softener and lots of detergent in them, so, you know, we have to take that out, you know, with special laundry …

ERIN ESTEVES: Assistants

MJ FISHER: Yes, assistants and just because we, if we, even when I bring the bag home, immediately I have to bring the bag into the garage because I can’t stand the smell and I’m not going to put that on my son who has never had, you know, any chemicals so, yeah, when we take care of that it is much better but same thing with cleaning. I mean we can’t use those cleaning, the cleaning anymore, like we were talking about earlier with the tub, I had my son right next to me that was like, you know, not even a second thought come in here while a clean the tub and eat your breakfast. And we wouldn’t have been able to do that before because, you know, I would be, usually was my husband cleaning while we were out, so that we can have time for it to air out, so yeah definitely. Just not even having to use those aerosol cans either is very helpful for the environment, helpful for yourself and …

ERIN ESTEVES: And helpful for you neighbors because you gave them all away.

MJ FISHER: Yeah, exactly.

[everybody laughs]

JAMELLE RYAN: Well, another thing that I found out was really, kind of, heading home for me when we had our baby a couple of years ago, was the fact that when she started to crawl her little hands and knees were going to be all over out floors and then what is she going to do – put them directly in her mouth. So we’ve not only stopped wearing the tennis shoes and the shoes in the household so we don’t bring in all of the street, but also what I cleaned my floors with was so very important to me, because I knew it was going to go right into my baby.

MJ FISHER: Yeah, so what do you clean your floors with?

COLINA COROTHERS: That was what I was going to ask because we are at that stage right now. He crawls everywhere and we have, like, wood floors and it is a nightmare. We have pets, so the fur flies around and I never realized until we moved into our home with no carpet because that was always our goal, we didn’t want carpet, because we knew how gross carpet got. And so when we moved into a place right before we had my son where there was not carpet, then we realized – holly crap, all of the stuff we can see now was in our carpet and that’s awful but cleaning, I know cleaning wood floors and I didn’t use, I wasn’t sure about that all purpose cleaner and I didn’t want to do anything crazy because we were renting the house and I didn’t want to ruin all the food floors. So that would be my big question, what would be a good thing on wood floors, especially that is safe for that and then of course safe for the family?

JAMELLE RYAN: Well, for our household we have the fake wood floors, we have the Pergo down and we have one of those hard floor cleaner, the actual machine, that is similar to, like a vacuum but it is for hard floor cleaning. And the solution that I put inside of it is very similar to the all purpose cleaner, that we have already talked about today. It contains vinegar and a little bit of, I use the Dr. Brunner’s castile soap instead of darn dish soap, but you know, you can use either one and then the baking soda and the warm water and then I drop a few different essential oils in it. I drop Melaleuca or also known as tea tree oil because it is super anti-bacterial and then I also do a citrus. I tradeoff between the grapefruit and the lemon and the lime because I just love that citrus fragrance because to me it smells clean. But it doesn’t leave any type of streaking on our floors at all, I think because of the vinegar and it really leaves the floors so clean that you could literally eat off of it or stick your fingers in your mouth.

MJ FISHER: There you go. Do you have to like, I have wood floors too and I was, I just basically do water and vinegar but I think I’m going to add some essential oils now, but do you have to clean it with what you, the cleaner that you are using and then, like clean it with water afterwards or do you just clean it …

ERIN ESTEVES: Oh, a good question.

JAMELLE RYAN: Yeah, I do, my machine that I have, actually has a water, kind of, rinse cycle, if you will. So it disperses the solution that I put in there with the vinegar and the baking soda and everything like that and then you do a second swipe that really is just pure clean water and then it sucks it up. So you not only, kind of wash it down but then it takes it all back up into the machine and you can get rid of the dirty water.

ERIN ESTEVES: See, I would never do the second swipe because I don’t have that fancy machine. So I need to make sure that whatever is on the floor is going to stay on the floor and it is okay to stay on the floor. So that’s why …

JAMELLE RYAN: It is okay to stay on the floor, that’s the good thing. I don’t know about the streaking, the streaking part.

ERIN ESTEVES: Yeah, and I have a concrete floor, so I don’t have the same issues that you ladies do, because I’m not worried about it.

JAMELLE RYAN: You know, it is really nice to find out what works for you and your family like if somebody is sensitive to a certain fragrance or you know, obviously a lot of those chemicals, we are all really sensitive to. So just de-toxin your household and making it a clean, fresh environment naturally.

JOHNER RIEHL: And there’s all sort, I think there are all sorts of great benefits that come from this. Not even in the chemical-free stuff that we have talked about, like that you are having more fun cleaning your house and that your two year olds are there with you and …

ERIN ESTEVES: And the aromatherapy …

JOHNER RIEHL: And you are healthier, I mean it’s …

JAMELLE RYAN: Yeah.

JOHNER RIEHL: It really hit so many aspects. All right, well thanks so much for joining us Jamelle, thanks for those who are joining us in the studio, thanks for listening. For more information about the topic, to make sure you see these recipes, go to the episode page on the website. We will be sharing it on all other social media channels as well. We are going to continue the conversation with Members of our Parents Savers club after the show. We are going to talk about safe times to clean and good times to clean, because there are some things that we may want to clean in different times than others, but a lot of the things, sounds like we can clean with these chemical-free products whenever we want, but we will talk about that a bit more after the show. Thanks so much for joining us, visit www.parentsavers.com for more information about that.

[Theme Music]

JOHNER RIEHL: And now we have a question from one of our listeners, Gaby Castrel asks – Hi, my daughter is barely two months old and is already growing two sets of teeth. The only thing that seems to work is her pacifier, yet she still can’t get a grip to it. Do you have any other tips or advice?

DR. TARA ZANDVLIED: Hi Gaby, this is Dr. Tara Zandvlied here in San Diego. Well, I’m not sure if you mean two individual bottom teeth that your daughter is growing or two whole sets of teeth but I’ll answer for both. Babies can actually be born with teeth, Louis XIV, King Louis the XIV was reportedly born with teeth and if they are solid in the mouth and they are not (inaudible) they can stay and the rest will come in naturally. Teeth do not have a proper time to come in, but they usually come between 2 months and 10 months old, with the average at 6 months.

In terms of two whole sets of teeth, it is rare but some children have two sets of baby teeth, either one goes right behind the other and they erupt at the same time or they lose one set and then grow what everyone thinks as their permanent set but then it loosens and falls out in the pre-teen years, when their real permanent teeth come in. If one is right behind the other, one of the sets of teeth needs to be pulled later on to help put the permanent teeth coming in. They call this – shark teeth for the obvious reasons. Now teething itself can be pretty rough on some children causing mild fevers, congestion, irritation, crying and sleepless nights all around.

The most helpful is to have them bite on pretty much anything; this puts pressure on the gums from above and evens out the pressure that the teeth are putting on the gums from below. Amber teethings necklaces are pretty as well as useful, but be aware of the choking risk of necklaces, so always monitor them. Cold is the other key, anything cold on the gums helps. You can try freezing a wet wash cloth or refrigerate the teething toys, frozen grapes or other fruits in a netted bag or even in a piece of knotted cheese cloth is good too when they are older.

When they are so little, like your little one, they can’t hold on to these things by themselves so it is labor intensive for mom. But they do love your fingers. If your baby is really agitated and cannot settle down to eat or sleep you can use about 1 ounce of chamomile tea without any sweetener, no more than one ounce a day, but it has a wonderful calming effect on your child. You can even soak that frozen wash cloth in chamomile tea then freeze it.

Herbal, tropical gels and creams can numb the gums and some homeopathic remedies are really nice choice as well. Natural tropical remedies can include the old one from grandma – ground cloves made into a paste with either butter, unsalted, or water and use stirringly or you could use ground ginger with water. Well I hope this helps for your little one, thanks, bye.

JOHNER RIEHL: That wraps up today’s episode of Parent Savers, we appreciate you listening. Don’t forget to check our sister’s shows on New Mommy Media – Preggie Pals for Expecting Parents, The Boob Group for moms who breastfeed their babies and Twin Talks for parents of multiples. Next week, we are going to be talking about another great topic of interest to parents everywhere. This is Parent Savers – Empowering new parents.

[Disclaimer]
This has been a New Mommy Media production. Information and material contained in this episode are presented for educational purposes only. Statements and opinions expressed in this episode are not necessarily those of New Mommy Media and should not be considered facts. Though information in which areas are related to be accurate, it is not intended to replace or substitute for professional, Medical, or advisor care and should not be used for diagnosing or treating health care problem or disease or prescribing any medications. If you have questions or concerns regarding your physical or mental health or the health of your baby, please seek assistance from a qualified health care provider.

[00:30:34]

[End of Audio]

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Episode Transcript

Parent Savers
Baby Steps to Chemical-Free Cleaning

[Theme Music]

JOHNER RIEHL: There are many reasons why we all try to keep a clean house and many products, designed to help us do so. But surprisingly few people are aware of the fact that using many of the common household products using harsh and toxic chemicals to make your house clean, can have detrimental and even dangerous effect on your family. Today we are talking all about chemical free cleaning.

[Theme Music/Intro]

JOHNER RIEHL: Welcome everybody to Parent Savers broadcasting from the Birth Education Center of San Diego. Parent Savers is weekly online on the Go Support Group for parents from then newborn years through kindergarten. I’m you host, Johner Riehl. Thanks again, all of our loyal listeners! You join us week in and week out. Thanks also to those of you who are listening for the firs time. As you may know, you can join our Parent Savers Club and receive access to special bonus content after each new show plus special giveaways of discounts from time to time.

If you haven’t already, please make sure to download the free Parent Savers app available on Android and iTunes market place and you’ll automatically have access to all of the great parenting advice conversations we have every week and if you are a member of our Parent Savers Club, you can access all of you great bonus contents trough there as well.

So before star today’s conversation, let’s meet everyone who is here in the room with us, so you guys, know who you are listening to. This is Johner Riehl, I’m the host, and I have three boys – seven years old Quinner, five years old Whitaker and two years old Zyler, which we’ve just realized in the last episode, seems to be the root of all our problems. Every time we do an episode, I’m like “The two years old does this! The two years old does this!” Also in scene is Mj.

MJ FISHER: Yeah, Mj Fisher, producer of The Boob Group, the other show, that we have here, and I have a son that is two and a half. His name is Jason.

ERIN ESTEVES: And I’m Erin Esteves, a producer of the show also known as OG Mama Cita and I have one little boy who is two-ish.

COLINA COROTHERS: I’m Colina Corothers. I have one little boy. He’s eight months and his name is Adam.

JOHNER RIEHL: And Jamelle is on the phone.

JAMELLE RYAN: And my name is Jamelle Ryan and I’m with the A Wholesome Home and I have a lovely little girl who is about two and a half.

JOHNER RIEHL: Okay, great. Well thanks for joining us, everyone.

[Theme Music]

JOHNER RIEHL: Before we start today’s conversation, from time to time, we like to look at news headlines, topics that are in the news, that are interesting to parents, that can stimulate kind of interesting conversation and this one is kind of interesting, because the reaction we’ve been even talking about before hand, was kind of on the opposite side of defense. And the headline is “Are we going to ban kids and the best possible way of paying someone else to baby-sit them”. We are from www.babel.com . When you are there, your family and yet you don’t have bring the whole family if you want to be there on February 7th, the Olive Garden is offering parents the opportunity to dine without their kids, because the restaurant will foot the bill for babysitting. According to Fox News, they’ve got a children’s activity center named “My gym” which will the place where the kids will play while their parents eat and all the moms and the dads have to do is pickup their kids after dinner, sure that all of the Olive Garden receipts in order to take advantage of the free babysitting. What are you guys think of that? So they are banging kids, but it’s in a good way. And it all will happen if you show up with a kid.

ERIN ESTEVES: Is the “My gym” right next door to the Olive Garden?

JOHNER RIEHL: I would imagine. There is lot of things next door to the Olive Garden.

MJ FISHER: I think some parents will really love it. I know I have a friend that has three kids. They would drop these kids in a second.

ERIN ESTEVES: You do it; it gets done at like Keia and other places, right? Or even at the Whayhi where they have the child cared there. So heck yeah, why not.

JOHNER RIEHL: But I wonder if this would appeal then to people who kind of get frustrated by kids. Maybe you would love going to the Olive Garden, but are so mad at...

[All Laughing]

JOHNER RIEHL: That’s you night to go. But then you are taking it away from the parents and they should go without kids.

ERIN ESTEVES: Yeah. I’m kind of torn, because I feel that if people who are oversensitive to children and social settings, I’m frankly really bothered by it, because I feel like there are just smaller parts of out society and they should stay home.

JOHNER RIEHL: Right, so there is the flipside of it like why do you have to get detached the kids.

MJ FISHER: And they were kids once, those people that get annoyed, like don’t you remember that you were a child too once?

ERIN ESTEVES: Yeah, and sometimes adult behavior is very annoying. I mean, you know, somebody at the table next to you maybe had a few to many or they are load, or they just are very obnoxious in what they are saying.

JOHNER RIEHL: But for those that listened to our recent episode at Valentine's Day about spicing up your marriage after kids - sometimes it's nice to remember that you are a wife and that you are a husband.

ERIN ESTEVES: Oh, absolutely.

MJ FISHER: Yeah. I think maybe if we were banning kids out of it, that would be..

[everybody talks]

COLINA COROTHER: My first reaction was pretty bad.

JOHNER RIEHL: Yeah, but then when you found about it you were like "Hey that's cool" . You know another interesting thing though - we drop out kids of to care to go some parent meeting at school and the four year old like bags us to go back. He is like "I love going to that place. I want to go!".

MJ FISHER: That's awesome.

JOHNER RIEHL: Sometimes it's not a punishment for the kids that you are tearing them apart to get them have fun and get them experienced.

ERIN ESTEVES: Well, I like the fact that they offered a solution whether or not there is one of these locations next-door to the Olive Garden that you frequent.

JOHNER RIEHL: Yeah, I think that's might be this specific Olive Garden now that you mentioned it. But maybe we can start a grass root effort to get it in Olive Gardens around the country. Maybe we can pick a different restaurant.

ERIN ESTEVES: Yes.

[everybody laughs]

[Music Theme]

JOHNER RIEHL: Todays topic is Baby Steps to Chemical Free Cleaning. Today we are talking with Jamelle Ryan who is with "A wholesome home" and it's important that we say "A wholesome home" and not "A wholesome home", because those kind of trend to blend together. Welcome, Jamelle.

JAMELLE RYAN: Thank you so much for having me.

JOHNER RIEHL: So what inspired to have a chemical free household?

JAMELLE RYAN: Well you know it was interesting - when I became pregnant for the first time in my life it literally changed my entire prospective and I began at that time of the journey, a holistic living path. So that holistic living path touched every point in my life - everything from what was I eating putting in my body, everything I was putting on my body, everything I would put on my baby and then what I used to clean my home. It became my focus and inspired me to provide to my family a wholesome home.

JOHNER RIEHL: Yeah, it's amazing how much things can change. How your whole word csn change.

ERIN ESTEVES: I'm not alone.

JAMELLE RYAN: You are not alone.

ERIN ESTEVES: I'm not alone

MJ FISHER: In a good way though. It's so awesome.

JOHNER RIEHL: Oh, it's amazing.

MJ FISHER: I mean I would never change anything that we've changed. It's like so great, including the cleaning.

JOHNER RIEHL: Right. And so what are, I mean, some of the steps to took to get to where you are now?

ERIN ESTEVES: Because it's pretty drastic, you know. We are all so trained to think that we need these very specific, very harsh products to get things quote on quote clean, you know - sterile.

COLINA COROTHERS: Kill the germs, kill them all.

JOHNER RIEHL: Oh yeah, definitely. Even when we buy school supplies we have to get specific products that the teachers request. Like we want light-salt disinfecting wipes. Like it's not even matter if (inaudible) product, you know, but it's great that they don't need just to disinfect things, they need to disinfect things with this specific product.

ERIN ESTEVES: Yeah, this is the only way that we are going to get it. Clean.

JAMELLE RYAN: And I think that a lot to it is in terms of sometimes too a lot of our families used as we were growing up. I mean a lot of these product were created you know, back when we were kids and so our parents started using them, our moms specifically, and it was just like "Oh that's what my mom used and I know our house is always so clean" and I have to use the same stuff, not realizing what it would do to us to us.

ERIN ESTEVES: Yeah we need to smell, you know.

JOHNER RIEHL: In all that aspects of parenting, that is such a tough thing to break free of or at least to identify as you are doing things because that's how you remember it.

ERIN ESTEVES: Right, that' what constitutes clean as a fit that smells in a certain way or...

JOHNER RIEHL: Sure sometimes that person in some of our cases might be judging if things are clean in the house and thats what many of us are trying to live up as well.

ERIN ESTEVES: So what were the first steps you took?

JAMELLE RYAN: For me, I think, my actual first step, when it comes to cleaning the household was when I literally just started doing a research. I researched everything I could possibly find on general products that I could use, that I knew were safe and non toxic and if they really were going to clean my house. And then I just started experimenting.

JOHNER RIEHL: That sounds awesome!

ERIN ESTEVES: Yeah! It also sounds time-consuming, you know, so I think that you have to spend that time up front.

JOHNER RIEHL: Well, but I think yes and no, right. I think that’s really the point, the idea that “Oh I’m just going to snap my fingers and all of the sudden be chemical free. You do need to kind of experiment and see what works. And it actually can be... It’s not immediate results, but probably it really doesn’t take that long to start figuring some great things out.

ERIN ESTEVES: And we have Pinterest now, which is…

MJ FISHER: And also what do you do with all the chemicals that had, you know?

ERIN ESTEVES: I gave them to my neighbors.

MJ FISHER: That’s one of my things like “I’m going to use this because I’m going to just use it up” But I’m not that way anymore. Everything is like sitting there, so you know…

ERIN ESTEVES: I gave it away.

MJ FISHER: You gave it to other people. That’s crunchy.

JOHNER RIEHL: They don’t care about as much.

[Everybody laughs]

ERIN ESTEVES: Aren’t too concerned with procreating, so…

[Everybody laughs]

ERIN ESTEVES: That’s fairly win.

JOHNER RIEHL: So let’s talk about some specific recipes. Let’s get into, you know, some of the fun things that you’ve discovered, Jamelle, and that you’ve tested and some of us here in studio have tested as well.

ERIN ESTEVES: So actually if I could jump in, I gave everyone a few different recipes to test. Colina and Mj tried some of these and I have also. So, Colina, was there one in particular?

COLINA COROTHERS: Yeah, I did the all-purpose cleaner and used it all over the place and it was good. I’ve made a rookie mistake though. There is baking soda and vinaigrette in that and I was thinking “Oh maybe if I do…” I didn’t go by steps that were on there and I was like “Well if I watered on the vinaigrette maybe that will be not as bad, because of the baking soda and then I know that “pfuuu”” And it turns out that’s not the way to do it, because even though it’s watered down I had just a volcano of cleaner all over my counter.

[Everybody laughs]

COLINA COROTHERS: And I panicked and I tried to put a lit on it which made it worse. It was an exiting experience. I wish my son was a little older because then he could have had some fun with that.

JOHNER RIEHL: Next time we’ll use go pros when we have this…

[Everybody laughs]

COLINA COROTHERS: So do the baking on the vinaigrette first together because they are so little. Don’t touch the water. No, but it worked really good and loved the fact that I could use it, I mean. All-purpose is very accurate. Even that we have a glass top stove, where we live, and everything streaks on it except for this really awful, really chemically glass top stove cleaner, that we were given and that did not streak, at all. And I was kind of worried, because there is like a little bit of soap in it. But yeah, that cleaned it really well and there are no streaks and there is no smell and my eyes didn’t burn. It was a good experience. I liked it.

ERIN ESTEVES: Yeah! So will you continue to use this?

COLINA COROTHERS: I think so, yeah. I’m going to have to figure out something with a spray bottle though, because I don’t know if pressure or something in the bottle that I have, it would like kind of build up and it wouldn’t want to squirt.

ERIN ESTEVES: Well, in my own experience I had to go trough several different types of spray bottles.

COLINA COROTHERS: Yeah.

JAMELLE RYAN: So did I.

ERIN ESTEVES: Because some of them aren’t so great. And eventually you’ll find the one that will work for you.

JAMELLE RYAN: You know the one that I found that works really great is at home depot or any of those types of stores. They have what they call like a heavy duty spray bottle and it’s actually made for heavy duty chemicals which is kind of funny, but the fact that it’s made for the heavy duty chemicals, the cleaning supplies that you put in, the ingredients in the bottle won’t affect the spray. So it’s actually a really great spray.

JOHNER RIEHL: That is really funny that that’s the spray bottle.

ERIN ESTEVES: And I think that it really boils down to suction. Is what it is. I think it has to do with the tube that leads down to the bottom of the bottle. How well it is secured with the upper part of the bottle. Because the bottles that I ended up getting, I got from a restaurant supply store. So yeah, then those work fabulous too because they also have the measurements one them and stuff. I don’t know what they are doing with them in restaurants, but… So Jamelle, what would you add to the all-purpose cleaner?

JAMELLE RYAN: There is a couple of essential oils that I actually, I kind of trade of and I’d add them to a very similar recipe. My all-purpose cleaner has the same ingredients. The only difference is instead of the dean soap, I actually use Doctor Bruner’s all-purposed soap, but still the white vinaigrette and the baking soda and the warm water as key to kind of melt everything together. And then I actually add a couple different essential oils. One of them is just straight lemon essential oil. I love the flagrance and not only that, but it’s extremely disinfecting and antibacterial and cleansing. And then there is also a blend of essential oils that I use called “On Guard” and it’s specifically sold by the brand of essential oil (inaudible) and this blend contains wild orange, clove bed, cinnamon bark, eucalyptus radiate and rosemary. And that combination is a powerhouse of cleaning.

ERIN ESTEVES: That’s hardcore!

JAMELLE RYAN: It’s super hardcore. It’s hardcore antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral. It’s a powerful disincentive, it’s purifying. I mean, it’s actually amazing and it smells pretty damn good too.

ERIN ESTEVES: Well, I’m definitely going to try this, because what I do for my all purpose cleaner is I actually take white vinaigrette and orange peal and I will soak the orange peal in the white vinaigrette for a couple of weeks and then so all of the essential oils from the orange peal go into the vinaigrette and then that’s what I use as my basis.

JAMELLE RYAN: So you are just castling you own essential oil.

ERIN ESTEVES: I am, I am.

JOHNER RIEHL: Will that work with kitties or does it have to be orange?

ERIN ESTEVES: I think the orange peal is sort of what would work. You could probably also do lemon peal.

JAMELLE RYAN: Or grapefruit. Grapefruit is another really great one. Any of the citrus. Lime as well.

JOHNER RIEHL: And here in Southern California like I feel like we all know a person that has one of those trees in their backyard. They are trying to get rid of those things.

ERIN ESTEVES: I know. Any time you go to the office or the doctor’s office or something there is always a bag of fruit on the counter.

JOHNER RIEHL: That’s a great reason to just take some and make your own oils to add to your cleaning supplies, because hey we all think “Alright am I going to make lemon bars?”

ERIN ESTEVES: And it doesn’t turn out to be a huge crafting project either, you know.

MJ FISHER: That’s actually what happened with me when I did a tub cleaner, so was the grapefruit and my girlfriend lives in Fallbrook and she has a huge grapefruit tree and she gave me like this and I love grapefruits, but she gave me a huge bag and so I’m giving them to friends and then this came up and I was like “Great! I’m going to be using the grapefruit.” So yeah I actually used it, I did it this morning, procrastinator that I am, but my husband was happy to clean my tub and I was super surprised that… Because at first you know how that little ring down at the bottom and it’s like orange and I’m like using it. I actually didn’t use kosher salt because I didn’t have kosher salt. I used regular salt, but it worked great and the scammer on the side of the tub was awesome. And then I had my son in there with me which is not the way we usually clean the bathroom, because of all the chemicals and usually we have to like open the window in there and not go in there for a while because of all the smell and everything, but was right there with me eating his breakfast, sitting on the toilet, while I was cleaning the tub. And like I said I was super impressed. It just looked awesome. It felt great.

ERIN ESTEVES: Well speaking of the tub, that’s one of the reasons that I started doing this, because there is nothing I can do to stop my kid from drinking the bathwater.

JAMELLE RYAN: I know exactly.

JOHNER RIEHL: Let’s take a quick break right here. We’ll be right back.

[Theme Music]

JOHNER RIEHL: Welcome back, everybody, to Parent Savers. Today we are talking to Jamelle Ryan who is with A Wholesome Home.

ERIN ESTEVES: Okay, so Jamelle, we are going to be talking a little bit about dusting sprays and about what could be safe on some of our more delicate furnishings and also what we can use on pretty much everything and anything. So we have a recipe for dusting spray that’s essentially vinaigrette, it has olive oil, lemon juice, vinegar and water. What would you add to that? How would you take care of your delicate furniture?

JAMELLE RYAN: You know, actually the lemon juice is a wonderful ingredient in this recipe. I would personally, instead of using the juice; I would just use the actual essential oil. You would probably need a lot less, the recipe calls for a teaspoon of lemon juice and I would probably use a few drops, maybe 2 to 3 drops of pure lemon essential oil. And lemon essential oil is going to help you, kind of, break up the syrup and the grease and any leftover stuff that you want to clean off of your furniture, as well as the dust.

ERIN ESTEVES: I had inherited a wooden table that had been owned by a smoker and I use the dusting spray to pull off all of that stink. Is there anything else that we could use, that might be a little, other than antibacterial but maybe anti-pest if we, for example have pets and we want to make sure that certain areas aren’t affected so much from them?

JAMELLE RYAN: Yes, for pest control one of the best essential oils for that is peppermint. It really helps to, kind of, detour all kinds of biting insects and pests of all kind, even spiders. But also with regards to the dusting spray specifically, there is another blend that’s called Purify and it contains various amounts of essential oils that have lemon, lime, pine, citronella, melaleuca and cilantro, and this is a very wonderful combination of oils because it is not only a disinfectant but it helps to actually purify the air as well. So specifically with your table, that you inherited, I would add this blend to the dusting spray recipe and it would take that smell of cigarettes smoke right out.

ERIN ESTEVES: Well, and I think, also that would broach the topic which is sometimes when we spray these aerosols, we can taste them or we can feel them in our lungs and they are not always that great for us.

MJ FISHER: Yeah, when you go natural, you know, holistic in your life, the chemicals and the products you used to use are, they really do affect you, you know, like your smell, even like my husband will, like, break out, like on his hands, like eczema, you know, just because it is just, we are just not used to it anymore and like the hand-me-down clothes that we will get from are families who aren’t as natural will, you know, have lots of fabrics softener and lots of detergent in them, so, you know, we have to take that out, you know, with special laundry …

ERIN ESTEVES: Assistants

MJ FISHER: Yes, assistants and just because we, if we, even when I bring the bag home, immediately I have to bring the bag into the garage because I can’t stand the smell and I’m not going to put that on my son who has never had, you know, any chemicals so, yeah, when we take care of that it is much better but same thing with cleaning. I mean we can’t use those cleaning, the cleaning anymore, like we were talking about earlier with the tub, I had my son right next to me that was like, you know, not even a second thought come in here while a clean the tub and eat your breakfast. And we wouldn’t have been able to do that before because, you know, I would be, usually was my husband cleaning while we were out, so that we can have time for it to air out, so yeah definitely. Just not even having to use those aerosol cans either is very helpful for the environment, helpful for yourself and …

ERIN ESTEVES: And helpful for you neighbors because you gave them all away.

MJ FISHER: Yeah, exactly.

[everybody laughs]

JAMELLE RYAN: Well, another thing that I found out was really, kind of, heading home for me when we had our baby a couple of years ago, was the fact that when she started to crawl her little hands and knees were going to be all over out floors and then what is she going to do – put them directly in her mouth. So we’ve not only stopped wearing the tennis shoes and the shoes in the household so we don’t bring in all of the street, but also what I cleaned my floors with was so very important to me, because I knew it was going to go right into my baby.

MJ FISHER: Yeah, so what do you clean your floors with?

COLINA COROTHERS: That was what I was going to ask because we are at that stage right now. He crawls everywhere and we have, like, wood floors and it is a nightmare. We have pets, so the fur flies around and I never realized until we moved into our home with no carpet because that was always our goal, we didn’t want carpet, because we knew how gross carpet got. And so when we moved into a place right before we had my son where there was not carpet, then we realized – holly crap, all of the stuff we can see now was in our carpet and that’s awful but cleaning, I know cleaning wood floors and I didn’t use, I wasn’t sure about that all purpose cleaner and I didn’t want to do anything crazy because we were renting the house and I didn’t want to ruin all the food floors. So that would be my big question, what would be a good thing on wood floors, especially that is safe for that and then of course safe for the family?

JAMELLE RYAN: Well, for our household we have the fake wood floors, we have the Pergo down and we have one of those hard floor cleaner, the actual machine, that is similar to, like a vacuum but it is for hard floor cleaning. And the solution that I put inside of it is very similar to the all purpose cleaner, that we have already talked about today. It contains vinegar and a little bit of, I use the Dr. Brunner’s castile soap instead of darn dish soap, but you know, you can use either one and then the baking soda and the warm water and then I drop a few different essential oils in it. I drop Melaleuca or also known as tea tree oil because it is super anti-bacterial and then I also do a citrus. I tradeoff between the grapefruit and the lemon and the lime because I just love that citrus fragrance because to me it smells clean. But it doesn’t leave any type of streaking on our floors at all, I think because of the vinegar and it really leaves the floors so clean that you could literally eat off of it or stick your fingers in your mouth.

MJ FISHER: There you go. Do you have to like, I have wood floors too and I was, I just basically do water and vinegar but I think I’m going to add some essential oils now, but do you have to clean it with what you, the cleaner that you are using and then, like clean it with water afterwards or do you just clean it …

ERIN ESTEVES: Oh, a good question.

JAMELLE RYAN: Yeah, I do, my machine that I have, actually has a water, kind of, rinse cycle, if you will. So it disperses the solution that I put in there with the vinegar and the baking soda and everything like that and then you do a second swipe that really is just pure clean water and then it sucks it up. So you not only, kind of wash it down but then it takes it all back up into the machine and you can get rid of the dirty water.

ERIN ESTEVES: See, I would never do the second swipe because I don’t have that fancy machine. So I need to make sure that whatever is on the floor is going to stay on the floor and it is okay to stay on the floor. So that’s why …

JAMELLE RYAN: It is okay to stay on the floor, that’s the good thing. I don’t know about the streaking, the streaking part.

ERIN ESTEVES: Yeah, and I have a concrete floor, so I don’t have the same issues that you ladies do, because I’m not worried about it.

JAMELLE RYAN: You know, it is really nice to find out what works for you and your family like if somebody is sensitive to a certain fragrance or you know, obviously a lot of those chemicals, we are all really sensitive to. So just de-toxin your household and making it a clean, fresh environment naturally.

JOHNER RIEHL: And there’s all sort, I think there are all sorts of great benefits that come from this. Not even in the chemical-free stuff that we have talked about, like that you are having more fun cleaning your house and that your two year olds are there with you and …

ERIN ESTEVES: And the aromatherapy …

JOHNER RIEHL: And you are healthier, I mean it’s …

JAMELLE RYAN: Yeah.

JOHNER RIEHL: It really hit so many aspects. All right, well thanks so much for joining us Jamelle, thanks for those who are joining us in the studio, thanks for listening. For more information about the topic, to make sure you see these recipes, go to the episode page on the website. We will be sharing it on all other social media channels as well. We are going to continue the conversation with Members of our Parents Savers club after the show. We are going to talk about safe times to clean and good times to clean, because there are some things that we may want to clean in different times than others, but a lot of the things, sounds like we can clean with these chemical-free products whenever we want, but we will talk about that a bit more after the show. Thanks so much for joining us, visit www.parentsavers.com for more information about that.

[Theme Music]

JOHNER RIEHL: And now we have a question from one of our listeners, Gaby Castrel asks – Hi, my daughter is barely two months old and is already growing two sets of teeth. The only thing that seems to work is her pacifier, yet she still can’t get a grip to it. Do you have any other tips or advice?

DR. TARA ZANDVLIED: Hi Gaby, this is Dr. Tara Zandvlied here in San Diego. Well, I’m not sure if you mean two individual bottom teeth that your daughter is growing or two whole sets of teeth but I’ll answer for both. Babies can actually be born with teeth, Louis XIV, King Louis the XIV was reportedly born with teeth and if they are solid in the mouth and they are not (inaudible) they can stay and the rest will come in naturally. Teeth do not have a proper time to come in, but they usually come between 2 months and 10 months old, with the average at 6 months.

In terms of two whole sets of teeth, it is rare but some children have two sets of baby teeth, either one goes right behind the other and they erupt at the same time or they lose one set and then grow what everyone thinks as their permanent set but then it loosens and falls out in the pre-teen years, when their real permanent teeth come in. If one is right behind the other, one of the sets of teeth needs to be pulled later on to help put the permanent teeth coming in. They call this – shark teeth for the obvious reasons. Now teething itself can be pretty rough on some children causing mild fevers, congestion, irritation, crying and sleepless nights all around.

The most helpful is to have them bite on pretty much anything; this puts pressure on the gums from above and evens out the pressure that the teeth are putting on the gums from below. Amber teethings necklaces are pretty as well as useful, but be aware of the choking risk of necklaces, so always monitor them. Cold is the other key, anything cold on the gums helps. You can try freezing a wet wash cloth or refrigerate the teething toys, frozen grapes or other fruits in a netted bag or even in a piece of knotted cheese cloth is good too when they are older.

When they are so little, like your little one, they can’t hold on to these things by themselves so it is labor intensive for mom. But they do love your fingers. If your baby is really agitated and cannot settle down to eat or sleep you can use about 1 ounce of chamomile tea without any sweetener, no more than one ounce a day, but it has a wonderful calming effect on your child. You can even soak that frozen wash cloth in chamomile tea then freeze it.

Herbal, tropical gels and creams can numb the gums and some homeopathic remedies are really nice choice as well. Natural tropical remedies can include the old one from grandma – ground cloves made into a paste with either butter, unsalted, or water and use stirringly or you could use ground ginger with water. Well I hope this helps for your little one, thanks, bye.

JOHNER RIEHL: That wraps up today’s episode of Parent Savers, we appreciate you listening. Don’t forget to check our sister’s shows on New Mommy Media – Preggie Pals for Expecting Parents, The Boob Group for moms who breastfeed their babies and Twin Talks for parents of multiples. Next week, we are going to be talking about another great topic of interest to parents everywhere. This is Parent Savers – Empowering new parents.

[Disclaimer]
This has been a New Mommy Media production. Information and material contained in this episode are presented for educational purposes only. Statements and opinions expressed in this episode are not necessarily those of New Mommy Media and should not be considered facts. Though information in which areas are related to be accurate, it is not intended to replace or substitute for professional, Medical, or advisor care and should not be used for diagnosing or treating health care problem or disease or prescribing any medications. If you have questions or concerns regarding your physical or mental health or the health of your baby, please seek assistance from a qualified health care provider.

[00:30:34]

[End of Audio]

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