This week Kimberly Rider joins us. Kimberly is the author of Organic Baby, and she’s sharing some tips for making a safer, healthier environment to welcome a new baby into our homes.
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Carrie Lauth: I am joined this week by Kimberly Rider, the author of “Organic Baby: Simple Steps For Healthy Living.” Hi, Kimberly.
Kimberly Rider: Hi, Carrie. It is a gorgeous sunny day and I’m just enjoying that spring is on the way.
Carrie Lauth: Oh, I know. I always get spring fever every year. It is a wonderful thing to come out of hibernation and feel the sun on your back again.
I love your book. One of my favorite things about it, and this is going to sound odd, but I love the fact that it is spiral-bound and the pages are so sturdy and durable because as a mom, I do not know about you, but my books get a lot of abuse.
Kimberly Rider: Mine do, too. I have those certain books that my son loves to pull off the shelf like the reference books that have pictures of babies and he just loves to tear the pictures. So, yeah it is helpful to have it hard cover, some things I just keep away from him because he just loves to explore.
Carrie Lauth: Well, this is great because Organic Baby is the kind of book that you are going to want to refer back to again and again when different topics come up that you want to research or during different stages of your baby’s life. It’s wonderful the way that you put the information together. What prompted you to write this book?
Kimberly Rider: Well, I am an interior designer and I have been looking into environmentally friendly materials for about 12 years now. Originally I wrote a book called the “Healthy Homework Book,” which is sort of the predecessor to this one. It is a really similar book, but it is more broad, a little bit more general. It talks more to the audience of people who are thinking about remodeling their home or just thinking about decorating.
As I wrote that book and later towards the end of the process found out I was pregnant. I realized there were a lot of little things that I really did not cover that were issues for me and for my husband while we were trying to set up the nursery or think about how I should be taking care of my body or what our home was going to be like, so I decided that we needed to go more in depth to help people who were in a similar situation.
Carrie Lauth: It is interesting that in magazines their are articles that talk about doing up the nursery with all of this just really beautiful and amazing looking furniture and gadgets and such, but a lot of times they do not focus on how that very activity of redecorating or putting together the baby’s room can really be a — what is the word I am looking for?
Kimberly Rider: Well, it is toxic.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah. That is it!
Kimberly Rider: It is the reality of it. Unfortunately, I hate to use that word because I do not like to scare people, but at the same time you have only got a couple of moments before your child comes where things are not just totally crazy yet.
My thought process on this was, take a moment for yourself while you are pregnant, or if you know someone is pregnant, and really think through, how do you want to live with your child? What kind of an environment do you want to bring them into? Because I do not think very many people feel like they have a control over that. I think they feel like, “Oh I just have to do what everyone else is doing,” or “I have to buy everything that I see in the catalogues.”
You can do whatever you want, but think about it is like a little chemical state because all the new products that you bring in there are typically more toxic than, say, something that is vintage or something that you know is pure and clean. It is just a really important process to be thinking through.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah, it really is. As parents, there are a lot of things we do not have control over, but we do have control over what we bring into our own home. We cannot control the air outside as much, but we can certainly make good choices about what we are decorating with and painting with and what kind of toys the baby is playing with and what kind of foods they are eating.
Kimberly Rider: Absolutely. Actually, the air quality inside your home can be up to 10 times worse than the air quality outside just because there is less exchange happening. Even if it is something as simple as making sure you air your baby’s room out a lot.
I know a lot of people that go through the difficult process of redecorating, making everything beautiful; but new paint, new carpet, new furniture, all those things have chemicals in them that the manufacturers do not jump out and say, “Oh, by the way, this one chemical that we used has been known to cause cancer.” They are not go about and tell you that even though it is the truth. I think the wonderful thing that is happening is that there are tons of companies putting out great products that are healthy, they are eco-friendly, and they are starting to really become, not only conventional aesthetically, but better than, brighter colors and prettier fabrics. It is just exciting.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah, it really is. I noticed that this month’s Parents Magazine is the “Green” issue and it’s loaded with toys, clothing, and all sorts of products that are environmentally friendly, non-toxic, made from organic cotton, things like that. It is a great trend to see because it really does matter.
I know, on a personal level, not when I was an infant, but as a teenager I went out of town with a friend on vacation. When I came back my parents had redecorated my room. It was a great thing. It needed some updating and it was a surprise. It was beautiful and I loved it, but interestingly a few weeks later, I started to develop some health problems. Years later, I realized that that was the trigger for some issues that I struggled with for years before I figured out what was going on. It really sounded down to me that that kind of stuff really does matter.
Kimberly Rider: Absolutely. I do not think that there are a lot of places where you can go to get this kind of information. I am working on a website right now that is going to really help to distill this down so that people do not have to spend two hours on the internet everyday looking for the things that they want, that they know is healthy and doing research because I have done that now for 10 years. Even though I have really enjoyed it, I feel like, “Wow, I would love to just make this simpler for people,” which was also one of the things with the book. This is kind of an introduction to thinking about it.
Now, let me help you one step further and you can just go to this one place, not necessarily to buy a product, but read about everything so that you can make quick decisions, but they are educated decisions. Kind of the wave of the future in terms of selecting products. They are going to be a lot more stringent, but in the meantime we have to do that job of researching and looking into what these things are made out of.
Carrie Lauth: I like that you have information in your book about how to talk with the people that are close to you and your baby, you family and baby sitters and such about your philosophy, about your wishes on things. That is a real challenge for people who are making choices that are not really well understood so they do not come across like they are overly picky, overly smothering, smother mothering.
Kimberly Rider: Well, it is good you bring that up because I struggled with how to talk about that in the book because I felt like it is really not my place to tell people “you have to talk to your in-laws,” but at the same time I felt like I could not skip over the importance of sharing your values with those around you.
I struggled with this because my son is in daycare and I bought them a copy of the book and I tried to show them the products that I use. Now, there are other moms in that daycare who are actually sharing in this information too and they felt like, “Wow! Why isn’t this common knowledge and why do we have to struggle for her to find it?” Because then everywhere they go, they tell people. Then like you said, it does not want to come off like you are strange or you are off the deep end, but it is also important to bring it up because this issues are important. I mean you are creating your child’s immune system for the rest of their life.
Carrie Lauth: Yes and babies and children are so much more vulnerable than we are. They breathe faster, their hearts beat faster, they are smaller. It is very important. You have some really great resources too that people can go see for more information.
Kimberly Rider: I hope it will be fun, too. I enjoyed looking through all the different websites and the different retail stores that are starting to sell great products because there is beautiful stuff out there. You can actually have fun researching it. You can feel like you have accomplished something. I think it is hard when you are getting ready to have a child or even if you have got more than one. You sometimes just want to check something off your list, “If I accomplish this, I’ll feel good about it.” I hope to help people do that.
Carrie Lauth: Tell us more about your other business, Atmosphera.
Kimberly Rider: Actually, I came from an industrial design background. I studied product design and I found that most of the people in school where I was going to school ended up becoming plastic product designers. They would design hair dryers and things that just did not excite me that much. I sort of turned my industrial design background into a home-based design service. We do traditional interior design, remodeling, decorating.
What I am doing now is kind of going back to my education and really starting to design products again, which is really where my heart is. I am designing a line of crib beddings and I am designing a line of house wares. I still have a whole bunch of clients and I work with people in their homes. We work with developers, but my heart is really in creating beautiful products. That is kind of the next step. Of course, everything that I am making will be sustainable and eco-friendly and somehow give back to the community because that is really what I believe in.
Carrie Lauth: For a family that perhaps is pregnant and they are listening or they have a young baby, what is the first thing or the most important place for them to start when it comes to raising an organic baby? What would you say is the first place they should put priority on?
Kimberly Rider: That is a great question. People ask me that all the time. I do not know. I think because I am so close to it, it seems like everything is equally important. I would actually say though that looking back on everything (because my baby is only 14 months old, so it is still fresh for me), it is really checking with yourself in terms of the spirit and the feeling that you want to create for your child because everything that this book talks about goes back to that.
If you feel like what you want to create for your child is healthy and non-toxic, happy and fun environment, maybe take a moment and start a journal or scrapbook for your child. Write down what your intentions are. That can set the tone to make all of these other little steps like working on the nursery and cleaning up this and that. I think it has more meaning.
After you do that, I would say the next thing to look at is personal care products. I just think it is one of those arenas that as an interior designer people would not think that I would talk about it, but we are at a crucial point in terms of understanding how important it is. Making sure that what we put on our skin is not toxic because it is the biggest organ of your body.
Especially when you are looking at your baby and putting perfumed or petro-chemically based products on your baby, just don’t do it. After you have made your letter of intention for your family, I would say the next thing is just really educate yourself about personal care products because that is what comes closest to your baby’s skin.
Carrie Lauth: Moms always get a lot of those as gifts at their baby showers and stuff.
Kimberly Rider: Absolutely. It is also a great place to realize that. I mean as much as it is fun to buy all the little different bottles and everything, a lot of these products are good crossover products. I have purchased certain different types of ointments and things for myself because I was really particular, but then realized, “Oh, this is the perfect product to use on my son because it is fragrance free and non-irritating.” You do not always have to buy everything for babies. It is more about turning the bottle over and reading the ingredients and understanding what those ingredients are.
Carrie Lauth: That is a good point because I know personally I have used a lot of products that are marketed for babies, but it goes both ways. If something is organic…
Kimberly Rider: Absolutely. Yeah, I love my son’s baby shampoo. It is fantastic. I think it is funny that you have to pay a different price and a different package for all these different products when in reality a lot of them have the same ingredients. They are just charging every time they package it differently.
Carrie Lauth: That is a good point.
Kimberly Rider: Find something you love, buy in bulk, and put it in a container you really like to use. It saves a lot in a lot of different ways.
Carrie Lauth: Kimberly, thanks so much for coming on this show this week. I love your book, “Organic Baby.” Tell us again the title of your first book?
Kimberly Rider: It is called the The Healthy Home Workbook and they are both published by Chronicle Books and available at Amazon.com. There is also a blog on Amazon.com, which is a great place to ask me questions or give me feedback because I will continue to write books and create this website and I would love to hear what people think. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
Carrie Lauth: Great! Thank you.
Kimberly Rider: Take care.
