I have to admit that my first concern with plastic is not toxins and off-gassing and all the possible health risks I mentioned here.  Of course I’m not happy that some plastics are bad for us, but I’d been avoiding them long before I ever heard the terms “phthalate” or “BPA.”  Plastic takes hundreds and hundreds of years to break down in a landfill.  Why buy a child a toy he’ll enjoy for three months, only to have it last for all eternity?  Sure, we can pass the toys on to other children, but after a while, plastic tends to look grubby.  Because it’s cheap, it’s often uncared for.

A wooden kitchen from Heirloom Wooden Toys

Hand-crafted, heirloom toys made out of sustainable woods, on the other hand, are beautiful.  These are the toys parents keep in a box to pass on to the grandchildren one day.  They can also serve as nursery decorations, which is more than we can say about a blinking plastic gizmo that sings the Alphabet song.  All of Audrey’s toys are hand-crafted heirlooms–I wouldn’t let her play with anything else.

Ha!  All right, so Audrey doesn’t have any hand-crafted heirloom toys.  She even has some plastic doodads, including ones that light up and make obnoxious sounds.  What can you do when so many friends and relatives give her these things as gifts?  Unfortunately, Audrey does not share her mother’s disdain for plastic–she loves her plastic toys.  Even so, I’ve devised a few ways to cut down on PVC playthings:

1. Give specific gift requests.  Friends and relatives are always asking what Audrey wants.  I ask for books, clothes, or specific toys such as wooden puzzles.
2. Keep plastic toys in rotation.  I can handle only so many blinking “learning tools” at a time.  I keep one or two out and store the others in my basement.
3. Donate toys to charity.  I have to admit that I have donated a few things before letting my daughter play with them.  At this age, she doesn’t know the difference.  I am not sure what I’ll do when she gets older.
4. Threaten family members.  We haven’t had to go this far–yet.  One relative, who shall remain anonymous, knows very well that we try to limit plastic toys for Audrey.  However, she persists in buying villages of plastic houses, barns, animals, and dolls.  She even made us promise not to give any of it away.  This is a devious plan, designed to lure Audrey away from her mean parents and into Fun Lady’s plastic-toy-filled house.  On the bright side, she has given us our word that from now on, she’ll stick with biodegradable presents such as books and clothing.

A wooden dollhouse from Little Wonderland

Recent concerns over toxins have some parents ditching every piece of plastic baby gear in the house.  This presents further problems.  If you give it away, you’re exposing other children to possible health risks.  If you throw it away, you’re piling more trash into a landfill.  My plan is to avoid accumulating more plastic and to pass it on when I’m through with it.  Older plastic does not off-gas as much as aged plastic, so I feel better about donating it than I do tossing it in the trash.  Now I’ve got to work on finding some of those heirloom toys. . . .

When winter hit this year, the walls of our small house seemed to close in with the darkness and cold.  Listening to updates about lowering interest rates and the drop in housing prices, I was suddenly hit by a wave of cramped angst.  Should we consider searching for a larger house before our family grows beyond our square footage?  The thought of going to open houses with a precocious toddler in tow was enough to make me nauseous. (And no, I’m not pregnant.) Below, Roscoe contemplates a new home and the concept of snow.

So I started to evaluate why we were thinking about purchasing another home.  My first reaction was that our son needed more room.  Together my husband and I wrote a list of all the things we would love in a future house.  We imagined a living room and a family room for Roscoe to play in with an ultra-efficient gas fireplace.  I envisioned a kitchen full of windows and long countertops to undertake summer canning events and large homemade meals. A huge row of solar panels and a solar hot water heater would be the icing on our dream-house cake. 

Then it dawned on us–-only one of the items on our list really involved our son-and to be honest, he has no idea that we’re missing a family room.  All the other details on the list were our housing fantasies.  Was it possible that we were inadvertently giving into social pressure to “keep up with the Joneses” by moving up into another house?  After all, Roscoe seems to be perfectly content with our home.  He especially enjoys the bathtub. 

Coral Serene Anderson’s article “Towards the Ecology of the Home,” posted here on our site, helped put things into perspective. Her family of three happily contemplated moving into a home with just 400-some square feet. Hmm… All of a sudden our living space of around 1,000 square feet became rather luxurious. Then I looked into how house sizes have changed over the last fifty years, and was astonished (and validated) by the data.  According to the National Association of Home Builders, in 1950 the average new single-family home was just 953 square feet.  AND family sizes were larger than they are today!  By 1970 it had jumped to 1500 square feet and by 1990 it had made it just over 2,000 square feet. The NPR article on the exploding increase in home sizes has some excellent information.   Although we didn’t intentionally think about our carbon footprint when purchasing our small and affordable home, the limited square footage has also shrunken our annual emissions and kept our utility bills low.  We need less than half the energy to heat and light our home than the average 2349 square foot American house.  In the summer we’re shaded by a giant maple tree that provides all our air conditioning.   A small, enclosed entryway provides solar heat in the spring and fall and keeps the warm air inside during the winter. 

Because we opted for a small house, we can afford to live in an area that is within walking distance to shopping and parks–and my husband can bike to work for more than half of the year.  The cost savings in taxes, commuting, energy consumption, and house payments has provided us with the freedom to cut back on our work hours to spend valuable time with our baby. 

Our cozy home has kept our family quite comfortable-even with all the gear that a new baby brings to the picture.  In fact, our limited space is a great consideration when it comes to accumulating baby paraphernalia.  We don’t buy it unless we’re willing to trip over it. There’s no need for gates simply because Roscoe isn’t ever far enough away to get into too much trouble. (Well, most of the time!)

 So, have I become proud of my tiny house?  A little.  Also, I’ve learned that with some bundling we can easily get beyond these walls and spend time outside, with friends, or touring the supermarket on toddling legs. And while we’re here, I appreciate the fact that I’m never more than a few feet away from my favorite people. 

When you have a baby, you’re always hearing about the latest hidden dangers and toxins lurking in almost everything you own.  Since my baby was born, I’ve been learning more and more about harmful chemicals in plastics.  The most recent panic-inducing study, published in this month’s issue of Pediatrics, proves that using baby bath products increases the amount of phthalates in babies’ urine.  Phthalates, found in many plastics, can affect reproductive development and play a role in allergies, runny noses, eczema, and even the concentrations of your baby’s hormones.

Was I just awash in toxic chemicals?

Yikes!  This information is enough to cause even the most laid-back parent to freak out.  (MSN’s headline, “Babies Awash in Toxic Chemicals,” didn’t help.)  You may have been lathering the baby up with baby wash and sprinkling him with powder since day one.  Now what?  According to uwnews.org, “Parents who want to decrease their baby’s exposure to phthalates should limit the amount of baby care products used on the infant, and apply lotions or powders only if medically indicated.”  I have decided not to freak out over the possible phthalate exposure of the past–instead, I’ll just work on limiting possible future exposure.

Limiting Baby Care Products.  Most pediatricians recommend using just water to wash a baby.  The great thing about this advice is that it’s easy and actually cheaper than using all those creams, soaps, and potions.  It’s difficult to know which products contain phthalates and which do not–at this time, companies are not required to include this information on their labels.  Burt’s Bees is one known safe choice.  Mama Rose’s Naturals produces baby care products from organic ingredients and essential oils which can be ordered online.  Although I haven’t purchased many baby toiletries for my daughter,  I am happy to know that my Earth-saving parenting tip to bathe your baby less often has another advantage: I am limiting her exposure to toxins.

For parents, there is always going to be something to worry about.  Maybe next year a new study will reveal that phthalates aren’t as terrible as everyone suspected.  Still, I figure it’s not a bad idea to reduce the amount of phthalates swimming around in my daughter’s urine.  Not only am I protecting her health, I’m looking out for the wellbeing of our planet, which doesn’t need another chunk of plastic filling up a landfill–phthalates or no phthalates!

Motherhood has moved my capacity for guilt to a whole new level—and I was pretty advanced to begin with. The guilt-rants that occur in my brain are often totally illogical (due to sleep deprivation) but it’s amazing how powerful they can become.  Here is a sample of a sudden guilt gush: “Why didn’t I bring mittens to the park? Now he’ll probably get frostbite and never be able to pursue his dream of professional fiddling!”

O.K. It doesn’t always get that bad, but it is hard to feel as though the entire well-being of another tiny soul rests on my shoulders.   So when I throw the health of the planet into the mix, I can occasionally become overwhelmed.  As I’m wheeling my son through the grocery store (and sensing an impending fit) it’s tough to make quick decisions about green packaging, organic products, and price—all while singing Itsy Bitsy Spider and planning a diaper change in a public restroom.

But if I don’t consider all that, my green guilt voice takes over.  “Who cares if your son is two minutes away from a melt-down.  You need to go back out to the car and get the fabric grocery bags.  The polar bears are dying for God’s sake and a few disposable sacks might be the deciding factor!” 

The good news is that the green guilt voice fades in comparison to my instinct to meet my son’s needs when he’s in distress. In this picture of Roscoe and me, you may be able to tell that it would be impossible for me to always put the planet’s needs above his own.

The biggest revelation for me in my green journey has been a simple phrase I gleaned from a fellow teacher: “progress not perfection.”  Ahh..  What a relief!  The permission to do the best I can under the circumstances and slowly take steps toward greener living. 

As you may have gathered from our blogs, Rebecca is a deeper shade of green than I am.  She’s a vegetarian, she’s incredibly resourceful (in a green Martha Stewart way), she doesn’t drive, and she makes my careful thriftiness look extravagant.  Then there’s my friend Pamela, who has opted not to have children to limit impact on the planet, is a devout vegan, and rides her bike for almost all her transportation needs.  Neither of these women piously tout their environmental agenda.  In fact, their actions come from a deeper place than guilt.

The truth is, guilt never gets me anywhere.  When I feel guilty about the need to exercise, I grab a cookie.  But when I imagine how good it would feel to move my body, feel the wind on my skin, and breathe I can actually get myself out the door for a walk.  The same goes for green motherhood.  If I can keep my focus on how good it will feel to more fully integrate eco-friendly choices into my life, I can be at peace with my own slow, clumsy progress—and during grocery store melt-downs the polar bears are just going to have to make it without my fabric grocery bags. (but I will choose paper!) 

Our 16-month-old notifies me that he’s teething by forcefully biting my finger or clamping down while breastfeeding (SO painful!).  He also produces loads of saliva to be used for slimy kisses or casual drooling. On a late night trip to the local drug store in search of a teething solution, I found that the only teething items on the mainstream market are all different shapes, sizes and colors of plastic.

While I hated using plastic because of its impact on the planet, I didn’t initially know about the health concerns. If you haven’t yet heard the recent news reports, here’s the update in a nutshell: Certain plastics leach carcinogens and toxins that could affect your baby’s development and/or reproductive health.  Ack! You say, my baby is chewing on a large hunk of plastic as I read this!  Luckily, there is a wonderful website, www.tinyfootprint.com, that will send you a wallet-sized card to help you select safer plastic products for your child.  The site also has excellent information on green cleaning,  green baby showers, and many other topics.

Even when I was armed with my handy-dandy safer plastics guide, I just couldn’t bring myself to buy plastic teething rings for my son.  So, I tried letting him chew on his wooden toys.  Hmmm. After he actually bit a chunk out of his wooden airplane wing, I attempted other strategies.  A little gizmo with a small mesh net you can fill with ice or cold fruit was helpful for awhile, but I still searched for the perfect object. 

In a local baby boutique I discovered Earnest Efforts wooden teething rattles made from recycled Oregon woods.  They’re hand-sanded to be ultra soft and coated in beeswax to be safe for babies. There’s no way Roscoe could gnaw a chunk out of these hardwood teethers.  Priced at $15 each, they cost much more than the average teething ring but would also outlast a plastic toy.

Still, the question kept popping into my brain: “How did people deal with teething hundreds of years ago?” Roscoe helped me unveil the answer during one of our afternoon walks.  He leaned over, picked up a smooth stone and bit down hard. I’m in no way a clean freak, but I couldn’t quite get comfy with Roscoe chewing on a large driveway rock.  My neighbor helped me solve my dilemma by giving Roscoe a polished agate–large enough so that he couldn’t choke on it and flat enough that he could get his gums around it.  It also happens to be far more aesthetically pleasing than a plastic teether. 

Here is a picture of Roscoe playing with one of the other natural teething solutions we came up with.  It’s green and quite economical! 

Since then Roscoe has shown me that the crusty heels of French bread or rustic wheat are marvelous for aching gums.  My daycare provider, an expert in green baby solutions for over 30 years, suggests soaking a washrag in chamomile tea and freezing it for a natural solution. When I cut up celery sticks and put them in a container full of water in the fridge, it works perfectly as a hand-held tool for my son.   Also, all of Roscoe’s teething favorites come with a price tag of next to nothing. Apparently thriftiness is a biological trait.  

The memory of dropping my five-month-old son off at daycare for the first time on that winter morning still takes my breath away.  As I walked the long gray hallway, I wasn’t sure my arms would be able to surrender him to anyone else.   It felt as if handing this soft-cheeked child off to a stranger would be like cleaving off a part of my body.

When I was eight months pregnant and everything was hypothetical (including the love I’d feel for my newborn), it seemed like a perfectly logical arrangement.  The daycare facility was close to my work, recommended by other families, and certified at all the right levels.  I hadn’t even thought to ask whether they would be willing to use organic food or work with cloth diapers. (To find out why I later decided to use organic food, watch for my upcoming blog “Organic Baby Food on The Cheap”)

After my part time day was over, I rushed back to daycare, worried about my baby.  The walk down the gray hall turned into a jog as I heard Roscoe screaming from several feet away. Over the next few weeks I kept hoping that he’d settle in, but every day I’d hear his scream the minute I got within ten feet of the front door.  Every day I had to load up the diaper bag with disposables and breast milk that he kept refusing to drink from the bottle.  Because of the daycare’s regulations, they threw out each bottle that I had painstakingly pumped every time Roscoe refused to drink.

What was I to do?  Quit my job?  Try to live as a family on one salary, give up our health insurance, and sell our house?  We felt desperate for a solution and ready to give up daycare altogether.  Finally, I had the good fortune to talk with an expert: another working mom.  She shared that her daycare worked with cloth, provided organic meals, and was an enjoyable place for her child to visit.  Was it possible that we could find a solution like that for our family?

On Valentines Day 2006 my husband and I fell in love again­­­––this time with the daycare of our dreams.  Kristie O’Brien, an in-home daycare provider with thirty years of experience, came to the door with a  welcoming smile and a relaxed manner that instantly put us at ease.  She showed us around her home, full of beautiful old books, a giant fish tank and a big back yard.  She was willing to do cloth diapers and was open to whatever food we wanted to bring for Roscoe.

Within two days, Kristie had Roscoe drinking breast milk from a bottle, sleeping in a regular nap schedule, and happily enjoying his time at daycare.  When I met her at the door to pick him up it was always like a brief appointment with a child development specialist. “He’s acting upset when he doesn’t see me which means he’s having trouble with object permanence.  You may want to play more peek-a-boo with him.” Or “I think he’s teething on the top right.  Try freezing washcloths soaked with chamomile tea and letting him bite on them.” What a difference from the first place where they always looked a little irritated that Roscoe screamed so much.

Here is what my clumsy trudge through the world of daycare taught me:

Start looking while pregnant.  I should have been at least visiting a variety of daycares to get a feel for what I was looking for.

Have a list of questions ready to ask—and include green concerns.   I felt totally defeated when I found that my daycare couldn’t work with cloth.  Also, the food wasn’t organic and they weren’t thrilled about me bringing my own.  I wish I would have seen the list of eco-healthy requirement on the Tiny Footprints website.

Check online. Tinyfootprints also has a page dedicated to listing eco-healthy daycares around the state of Oregon.

Seek out referrals. I didn’t start desperately asking friends until I was desperate.  It would have been good to find out what other people were using for daycare from happy parents far in advance.

Go with your gut.  When our first daycare kept assuring me that things would go better soon, my mind wanted to believe it.  My gut, however, was in turmoil all the way there, all the way back, and at several points in between.  When I talked to Kristie, on the other hand, I knew she loved her career and got a gut endorsement right from the start. 

Now when we drop Roscoe off, he dives for Kristie’s arms.  A few times he’s even had a hard time leaving when we pick him up.  Also, her daycare is located very close to our home and is more reasonable than the previous one.  Although it was a long slog to find a good solution, I’m so glad that we were willing to search out an option that fit for Roscoe and for us.  What a relief!  

Sleep. Ahh sleep! I remember those nights when I snuggled into bed and enjoyed an unfettered slumber of more than eight hours without a second thought. If I had six hours of sleep or less, my day was spent barely coping with my shocking state of sleep deprivation. My how things have changed!

When our son Roscoe was first born, our biggest struggle was colic. There were hours of crying, often scheduled by our purple, screaming son to continue between the hours of 3:27 and 5:46am. We noticed that the whites of our eyes were permanently pink and we often found ourselves breaking into hysterical laughter for no reason whatsoever.  When Roscoe was asleep, we almost forgot how bad the constant crying was.  Here he is dreaming of plans to interrupt our sleep in the middle of the night. 

Then, just as we overcame the colic, we moved into nighttime wetting. As dedicated cloth diaper users, we tried a variety of strategies including double diapering, fleece and wool liners, 10 p.m. diaper changes, and a variety of covers. Roscoe managed to pee through whatever obstacle we placed in front of him. If peeing were an Olympic event, that would be great—but it isn’t, and we were tired.

When we talked to our cloth diapering friends, they all told us their dirty little nighttime secret—disposables. Oh the horror! At first we continued with diaper and clothing changes in the wee hours of the night, but eventually our fatigue-addled wills gave in. That was months ago, and now Roscoe sleeps for most of the night wearing disposables.

We use seven disposables a week (which is seven more than we’d like) but we’re still concerned about some of the health factors related to disposable diapers. Click here to read about links between disposables and male infertility as well as an increased risk of developing asthma.The best tips seem to come from moms who are up to their elbows in diapers. What do you do to keep baby dry at night? Do you use G-diapers, double diaper, or use a cloth diaper product that seems to do the trick? I’m desperate for a solution…and some sleep!

There are some mothers who are up-to-date on all the latest recommendations in pregnancy and child development. These women avoid caffeine and soft cheeses during pregnancy and compliment their child in five different languages when he reaches a new milestone (five months ahead of his peers, no doubt). On the opposite end of the spectrum, we find the parents who, through lack of education and resources, remain ignorant of all the expert opinions in child-minding.

And then there are the parents like me. Parents who know all about the baby rules and regulations touted by medical and safety authorities and blatantly disregard them! Why do I do it? I guess I’m just a renegade, a rebel, a rule-breaker in general. Or . . . maybe I am just lazy. Or . . . I am doing it to save the world! Here are just some of the rules I break out of eco-consciousness:

I don’t use paper towels. Okay, there is no rule about using paper towels, but many parents believe paper towels are necessary for wiping up spills and dirty faces. I just use washcloths.

I let baby eat off the floor. The five second rule is in full effect at our house. I hate wasting food more than I value perfectly sanitary eating conditions. A recent study by Clemson University validates my earth-friendly practice, proving that food eaten within five seconds after contact with the floor is safer than food that has been lying on the floor for a long, long time. Good to know. The Grinder, a food media blog, writes about it here.

I wash baby’s laundry with our laundry. I had heard about washing our daughter’s clothes in a separate load. Never did it. I would have to buy a lot of clothes to make up a full load, and tossing just two pairs of pants and three onesies in the wash is not a sustainable practice (for me or the environment). I even found a hospital to back me up on this one.

I let her sleep in a used crib. How many times have you heard that a baby should never, ever, ever sleep in a used crib? I just followed the guidelines set by the American Academy of Pediatrics and my baby has been snoozing peacefully in her secondhand crib for over a year and a half now with no ill effects.

I don’t sterilize anything. This rule may have been revised now that more people are concerned about the toxins leaching from plastic, especially when plastic is heated. However, there are still those who practice vigilant sterilization of every surface the baby may come in contact with: bottles, toys, floors, walls, etc. I belong more to the “germs are good for the baby; they’ll help build her immune system” school of thought.

I don’t turn the heat up. Before the baby was born, we set the thermostat at 62 degrees during the day and turned it off at night. After layering on multiple sweaters, hats, scarves, and gloves, it was perfectly comfortable. Imagine my shock upon hearing babies need the thermostat cranked up to 74 degrees. We didn’t do it. Instead, we turned the thermostat to 64 (the decadence!) during the day and 59 at night. We keep a small heater in her room since it’s dangerous to pile blankets on top of a baby, and we save energy by not heating the entire house. Our daughter always feels perfectly warm and toasty.

I don’t give the baby daily baths. Again, this is not exactly a rule. In fact, many pediatricians recommend bathing babies less frequently to avoid skin irritations from too much warm water. Bathing my baby just once a week (whether she needs it or not) saves at least 120 gallons of water a week, or 6,240 gallons a year!

So why break the rules? I figure all this reckless rule-breaking is better for my budget, my sanity, the Earth, and my baby. Most of the children on the planet don’t live by these conventions and are perfectly happy without paper towels and separately-washed laundry. My daughter will still have a wonderful childhood—the beefed-up immune system and environmental rebelliousness will just be bonuses.