Aromatherapy for the Average Mom: Blends and Baths
Erin Burt
Many of my friends and facebook friends are using essential oils and selling essential oils. I’ve learned that just because they are selling an essential oil, doesn’t mean they’re an expert on safely using those oils.
According to the Tisserand Institute, a leading group in essential oil safety, the incidents of adverse reactions to essential oils reported to U.S. Poison control has gone up significantly in the last 20 years especially in the 0-6 year old age group. While most of those incidents aren’t major, it’s still important to keep safety in the forefront when using essential oils, especially as moms of small ones.
As I said in my previous post, limited diffusion is usually the safest and most effective route to utilize your essential oils. This great site has a pretty extensive list of different oils that are safe for diffusing around kids of different ages.
What about all these oil blends I’ve got?
If you’ve already got some oils that you use, I encourage you to look up the oils in those blends here and see if they’re safe to use around your little ones. If those oils aren’t safe to use around your kids, try using a personal aromatherapy inhaler. You can also diffuse unsafe oils while your kiddos are napping, just give the room 30 minutes to an hour to air out after you stop diffusing. Sometimes I diffuse a couple of drops of an unsafe oil after my girl goes to bed, especially if I’m having sinus problems.
Take a little me time
If you’re looking for a great way to use some essential oils to relax yourself, try taking a nice bath. Use some of those relaxing essential oils we talked about in the last post (stay away from clove and cinnamon, they need to be way too diluted to use in a bath), and put a few drops in some castile soap (lots of that soap already has essential oils in it already), mix it with some Epsom or pink Himalayan salts, and take a relaxing bath after the kids are finally down for the night.
If you’re not a bath person, take one of these diffusers and put it in the back of the tub (away from the water) with an uplifting oil like bergamot and it should help perk you up in your morning shower.
Jenny Ditch is an essential oil using mom in Illinois who loves to relax but never takes the time to take a bath.