HJ

Wow, I could have written this exact question! (I didn’t). This is exactly how I feel sometimes when I think about exposing my daughter to plastic and my concerns about the environmental impact. I’ll write mostly about the plastic exposure part, because that causes the most panic for me personally.

This panic still shows up for me, but recently I feel like I’ve been able to reduce the panic. The main things that shifted it for me was recognizing that 1) my intention is to keep my daughter healthy and safe, and there is so much that is out of my control and 2) that I was reacting to any studies about plastic from a place of anxiety and fear, as opposed to being calm and logical about it. (actually by coming from a place of anxiety and fear, I was ignoring things that were potentially working against that intention of keeping her safe, because I would just ignore potentially useful information to keep myself comfortable).

The more I could become comfortable with the fear and anxiety, then the more freedom I felt to be able to calmly assess any new studies. Just recognizing when the fear and anxiety is present goes a long way. This makes it sound easy, and it isn’t, but it is an ongoing practice. Of course, Emily helps a lot here too, because I trust her assessment of the validity of studies, once I’m in a more calm state.

The other thing I realized, is that I was internalizing the messages that “plastic is harmful to my baby” primarily from companies that were trying to sell me a non-plastic product. Actually I went through a few phases of panicking about plastic toys and then immediately ordering a “sustainable” toy instead to ease that panic.

Send yourself so much love and compassion – it is hard to be a parent (and a human, for that matter)! Especially when there are continuous messages about all the products we “should” be buying.