The new baby blend
A new baby rearranges everything, including you. These five are for the parent, not the baby: the tiredness that has gone past tired, the checking that never switches off, and the gray mornings nobody warns you about.
The five inside, and why each is there
Each one covers a different face of the same situation, and the blend is all of them together. Read any of them in full to see how much of it is yours, and buy them singly if you would rather mix your own.
OliveFor tiredness that has gone past tired, when sleep happens in fragments and stopped being enough weeks ago.Check price on Amazon(opens on Amazon in a new tab)
WalnutFor the change itself. A whole identity is being refitted around a very small person.Check price on Amazon(opens on Amazon in a new tab)
Red ChestnutFor the 2am checking, the worry for the baby that never quite goes off duty.Check price on Amazon(opens on Amazon in a new tab)
ElmFor the overwhelm of being suddenly responsible for everything, including someone's entire existence.Check price on Amazon(opens on Amazon in a new tab)
MustardFor the gray days that arrive from nowhere in the middle of what is supposed to be joy, and lift as strangely as they came.Check price on Amazon(opens on Amazon in a new tab)
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When people reach for it
- You are running on fragments of sleep and calling it fine
- You check the baby is breathing, again, having checked four minutes ago
- You are weepy at nothing and cannot explain it to anyone
- The love is enormous and so is the overwhelm, at the same time
How to take it
Two drops of each of the five into a 30ml bottle of spring water, four drops four times a day. That is the blend as it stands, and the practical version is a bottle that lives by the kettle and gets used whenever you pass it.
Read the five above when you get a minute and keep the ones that sound like your week. Most weeks are two or three of them rather than all five, and the week after that is often a different two or three.
And tell someone how you are actually doing, not just how the baby is. The remedies sit alongside the nap you finally take and the person who takes the morning shift, never instead of them.
The mixing guide walks through the whole method, bottle sizes and all.
Common questions
Can I take it while breastfeeding?
The remedies are famously gentle and the tradition has used them at every stage of life, including this one. A dose from a mixing bottle carries a tiny trace of the brandy the stocks are preserved in, and glycerin based versions exist if you would rather skip even that. Trust your own sense of what you need.
Is this blend for the parent or the baby?
The parent. The baby's job in the first months is simpler and mostly involves being carried through it by you, which is exactly why you are the one who needs the support. A steadier parent is the best thing in the room for a baby.
Does it matter which parent takes it?
Not at all. The blend has no opinion about who is doing the caring, and the partner running on the same broken nights with the same new weight of responsibility is describing Olive and Elm as surely as anyone.
The gray days worry me. Is that what Mustard is for?
Mustard is the traditional remedy for gloom that descends without a reason and lifts the same way, and those days are common in the first months. Be gentle with yourself about them, take the remedy, and keep telling someone you trust how you are really doing. You deserve looking after too.
A blend is one answer for everyone
If what you are carrying is a pattern rather than a situation, a remedy chosen for how you actually feel will fit better. The quiz narrows the 38 in about a minute.