Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Natural home made diaper cream - unpetroleum jelly




As I am eagerly waiting for my baby to be born (week 33) I have already been (in addition to taking care of my toddler) practising hypnobirthing, preparing my home birth supplies (yes, I am preparing for an HBAC, homebirth after cesarean!) and taking out baby clothes and cloth diapers. Suddenly I remembered that we needed diaper cream when my older son was a baby. I have been making many of my cosmetic products recently myself so I decided to make a diaper cream too.

With a quick web search and search through Wholefoods baby shelf I ended up trying to make my own unpetroleum jelly since I have most ingredients used in the commercial unpetroleum jelly.

What is wrong with the traditional petroleum jelly? It bothers me that the petroleum jelly is derived from the same crude oil that is used to make gasoline. I want to make a cream that has wonderful plant oils.

Here is the recipe I used:

1 small bar of beeswax (I would think it is about 3-4 tbsp), half an ounce or an ounce (bought mine from Mountain Rose Herbs while ago so I have forgotten the weight, they sell 1 oz bars so that is what this probably was too)

1/2 cup of oils - I used half coconut oil and half castor oil

2-3 drops of vitamin E oil (optional)

2 drops of lavender essential oil (optional)

Melt all ingredients on low in a sauce pan and pour in jars. Place in the fridge to solidify. Keep out if you want them softer.

It turned out beautiful. I noticed that it works wonderfully also as a lip balm. It is quite solid so I would reduce the amount of beeswax in relation to the oils. If you want very loose spreadable cream, maybe even double the oils in the recipe. I am not sure how good it is for the cream but I did this once: If the cream becomes too solid, you can melt it again and add oil. When you heat it up, the vitamin E and essential oil might get ruined and evaporated so you might have to add those again.

I buy this brand coconut oil online. If you order by clicking on any my links and have never ordered from Tropical Traditions in the past, you will receive a free book on Virgin Coconut Oil, and I will receive a discount coupon for referring you. Thanks for your support!

4 comments:

  1. Me too! I am thinking it could be even looser though, so maybe more oil next time. It works very well as a lip balm though, I put some in a lip balm container. Although I am trying not to use any LOL

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  2. Wow! This looks wonderful. I am 31 weeks and also going to have a hypnobirth. What are some of the cosmetics you've made yourself?

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  3. Sorry Brandy, I had missed the comment in June and just now published it! You must have had your baby by now! I make my deodorant myself (look for recipe in this post!). I have tried making body butters, lip balms, after shave colognes and creams for husband and stuff like that. At some point I was really into making my own cleaning detergents.

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