Runaway October

While I was work­ing I could eas­ily spend all day cruis­ing the inter­net, with lim­ited acces­si­bil­ity because of fire­walls and IP block­ers. I spent most of my time perus­ing par­ent­ing forums. My favorite was Mothering.com, which is where I came across the crazy notion that sham­poo was mak­ing my curly hair unruly. They called it No ‘Poo, I called it nuts. While doing some research I came to real­ize that typ­i­cal sham­poo was chock full of chem­i­cals, most that I couldn’t pro­nounce and didn’t want to rub on my head. 

There are a cou­ple of premises behind No ‘Poo. A few are:

• Sham­poo is a deter­gent and lit­er­ally strips your hair of mois­ture, oil and shine, mak­ing it prone to dam­age and break­age.
  
• Curly hair is espe­cially prone to sham­poo dam­age because it is more porous and frag­ile.
  
• Because hair is fre­quently stripped of its nat­ural oils, your scalp goes into hyper­drive. This is why some peo­ple describe their hair as an oil slick.
  

Start with three main ingre­di­ents — Bak­ing Soda, Apple Cider Vine­gar and a good con­di­tioner. When pur­chas­ing a con­di­tioner, read the ingre­di­ents.

• Try to find some­thing that does not have any ‘cones’ — Dime­thicone, Sil­i­cone, etc. These will coat your hair and you’ll end up with a greasy mess.
  
• Avoid min­eral oil, a nasty byprod­uct of gaso­line dis­till­ing. Your body id unable to absorb it, so it will also cre­ate a greasy mess. It also blocks the scalp from releas­ing built up tox­ins and oil. Acne any­one?
  
• Also avoid Sodium Lau­ryl Sul­fate (SLS) and Sodium Lau­reth Sul­fate (SLFS). Known skin irri­tants, SLS and SLFS are com­monly added to sham­poo and other deter­gents as a foam­ing aget. They are cur­rently being ques­tioned regard­ing can­cer and toxic build up in tis­sues.
  
• If you use a gel, use a clear one. You may find that oils work well for you now, such as coconut oil, jojoba oil, apri­cot oil, extra vir­gin olive oil. Some peo­ple like to use alcohol-free Aloe Vera gel.
  

When Declan was born, I was a shower and sham­poo every day kind of girl. I used lots of extras to keep my hair in check. I tried No ‘Poo for about a week before I couldn’t han­dle it. My roots were detox­ing and super greasy and my ends were dry, split and straw like. I had to go in pub­lic like that for 40+ hours a weeks. Eek.

Now that I stay home with the boys, I don’t get out as often and sham­poo­ing has come down to 2 or 3 times a weeks, to save time in the shower. I’m hop­ing that my hair wont have to detox nearly as much this time, and if it does, oh well. I can always wear a hat to the gro­cery store.

I’ll be photo doc­u­ment­ing my jour­ney and post­ing more info as I go. Next Up — No ‘Poo routines.

Here are some No ‘Poo sources:

What is No ‘Poo?

Info: Sham­poo Free

The No ‘Poo Method

The No Sham­poo Alter­na­tive — No Poo

Of Course I Washed My Hair Last Year (I’m Almost Certain)

How to Ditch Shampoo

All about the No ‘Poo Routine

Break the Sham­poo Habit

Treat­ing Your Hair Like a Bath­room Sink

Conditioner-Only Hair Washing

Wise Woman Forum — The No Sham­poo Thread

Moth­er­ing Dot Com­mune — Going No Shampoo

Have you ever con­sid­ered chang­ing up your beauty rou­tine in such a dra­matic way? If so, how or why not?

Have any of you tried No ‘Poo?

Some­times it’s so nice to just wipe a slate clean and start over again.

Last years res­o­lu­tions were hit or miss.

1…) Stop cussing, com­pletely. Neg­a­tive

2…) Smile more. Kinda sorta, I guess.

3…) Spend more indi­vid­ual time with Declan and treat him like an adult. Yes and no.

4…) Cre­ate and add some items to my Etsy shop. Nope.

5…) Do more craft projects — for myself and with the kids. Yes!

So, once again I’m going to set some res­o­lu­tions and think about them ran­domly throughtout the year and feel bad when I don’t hit them 100%. Yep. Sounds about right.

1.) Stop cussing, com­pletely — How did I end up wih such a potty mouth? While I admit that Declan telling me my ass is too big makes me gig­gle, it’s also quite embarass­ing in public.

2.) Detox­ify the house — This one is dif­fi­cult because my mom buys her own clean­ing prod­ucts and calls me, jok­ingly, a tree­hug­ger for my choices. It’s just so easy to have things build up under the sinks. Thank­fully I clean so infre­quently that it’s not a real issue to toss every­thing. I’m also going to start “No ‘Poo“ing my hair again. I tried before while work­ing but couldn’t han­dle going out in pub­lic dur­ing the really wonky phase. Here’s a great Live­Jour­nal com­mu­nity for it. We have an on again, off again rela­tion­ship with the health­ier beauty prod­ucts, mainly because of finances. I think it might be time to just suck it up and buy what I know is best for the fam­ily — not best for my bank account.

3.) ETSY — Seri­ously, why can’t I get this going? I’ve decided not to do any­more swaps, so maybe that will make it eas­ier? Wih the purc­ahse of a new sewing machine (50% off clear­ance sale) I’m definitly going to com­plete more projects, but I’d like to make a lit­tle extra cash too.

4.) Try to cut back on HFCS and MSG — With that com­bi­na­tion it leaves next to zilch to buy. Thank­fully Matt is on board with me and we’ve both done some research into the issue. Frankly it scares us.

Alright, I think that’s enough bab­bling. And the boys are wait­ing on me to watch a movie.

Thanks for reading!

I can’t say that I’m not a fan, because I’m not even sure if I’ve heard any of her music. But I came across an inter­view of her and I have to say I’m a fan now even if I haven’t heard her music.

When asked how moth­er­hood has changed how she views the world:

“Being a mom seems to have changed the way the world sees me more than the other way around. Being preg­nant really shifts your rela­tion­ship to soci­ety, and then walk­ing around with a baby shifts it again. I love the feel­ing that I get from other par­ents — women in par­tic­u­lar — of being a part of the club. Club Sac­ri­fice, you might call it. It’s cool to have cama­raderie, warmth, and open­ness with strangers. I wish that dynamic was more preva­lent in gen­eral, but I am grate­ful to have it now.”

When asked if she would have a home­birth again:

“I would def­i­nitely choose a home­birth again despite the fear mon­ger­ing of this patri­ar­chal soci­ety, which con­vinces women that they are inca­pable of hav­ing babies with­out the inter­ven­tion of men and their machines. I look at soci­eties where women are mar­gin­al­ized and oppressed their whole lives (even cov­ered head to toe in tarps!) but are still in con­trol of birthing prac­tice, in a whole new way now. I mean, who is really more advanced? To take birthing out of women’s hands and deny us the con­tin­uüm of eons of wis­dom and expe­ri­ence is to eject us from the very seat of our power. I believe that women in hos­pi­tals are pre­vented from being able to have nor­mal, healthy birthing expe­ri­ences because of the intim­i­da­tion of being on the clock, being pres­sured to take drugs to make it quicker, being inhib­ited in their move­ment and activ­i­ties, and alien­ated by a ster­ile, flu­o­res­cent lit, feet-in-the-air type envi­ron­ment. You know the clas­sic “per­for­mance anx­i­ety” of not being able to pee or poo because somebody’s watch­ing you? Mul­ti­ply that by a mil­lion! A cervix is a sphinc­ter after all! Then to add tragic insult to injury women are numbed through their great moment of rev­e­la­tion. I believe the act of giv­ing birth to be the sin­gle most mirac­u­lous thing a human being can do and it is surely the moment when a lot of women finally under­stand the depth of their power and con­nec­tion to all of nature. You think it can’t pos­si­bly be done, you think you can’t pos­si­bly take the pain, and then you do — and after­ward you look at your­self in a whole new way. If you can do that, you can do any­thing. Check out the books on this sub­ject by Ina May Gaskin. She’s one of my great heroes. P.S. I was in labor for 43 hours. Pushed for five hours. It was bru­tal and scary and pro­longed, and if I was in a hos­pi­tal, they would have def­i­nitely cut the baby out of me. I thank the god­desses that I was at home with patient mid­wives who knew how to go the dis­tance. The mem­ory of pain always recedes. The mem­ory of tri­umph does not.”

I just love that last quote. So true.

I’m not gonna get on my high horse or any­thing, but I really wish that more women would think about birth choices and the effect that it has on every sin­gle per­son in this soci­ety. Too often do I talk to moth­ers who don’t even know that there are choices. Life in Amer­ica is all about the choices ladies! Please ask what they are.

Via [Celebrity Baby Blog]