When I Was Pregnant, No One Asked What I Put on My Skin
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As soon as I became pregnant with my son, Dewey, it seemed like all the advice anyone wanted to give had to do with what I was eating. Do not eat sushi, do not eat deli meat, do eat your veggies, fruits, and milk. You get the picture. From my first OB appointment to my last, most of our conversations were about weight gain, food, and sleep. I did not think twice about what I was using on my skin. In fact, I had read somewhere that a lotion with glitter in it would help with stretch marks, so I slathered Olay shimmering lotion all over myself for nine months straight. It makes me feel ill to remember it, but I just did not know. It seems like common sense now, but at the time I figured if the doctors were not mentioning it, it was not an issue. I know better now.
I know because I lived it. When I was pregnant, I did not know any better. I used whatever was at the drugstore, never turned the bottle over, never asked a single question. My OB cared a great deal about my prenatal and my raw fish. She never once mentioned my lotion, my detergent, or my face cream. The whole conversation was about what went in, and none of it was about what went on.
Your skin does not ignore what you give it
Here is why that gap matters. Your skin is your largest organ, and it absorbs. What you put on it does not just sit there for looks. Some of it goes in. So the same care we bring to the dinner plate belongs on the bathroom shelf, especially in the one season you are most careful about everything else.
That is not a reason to panic. It is a reason to give your skin the same attention you are already giving your food.
What actually gets flagged
Since no one is likely to hand you this list, here it is. A few skincare ingredients show up on nearly every guide of what to avoid while pregnant. Retinoids, the vitamin A derivatives in most anti-aging and acne products. Hydroquinone, a skin lightener. High-dose leave-on salicylic acid, the kind in strong acne peels. Oxybenzone, a chemical sunscreen filter. Formaldehyde-releasing preservatives. And high concentrations of certain essential oils.
Here is the honest part most fear pieces skip. A lot of the concern traces back to oral doses, high concentrations, or animal studies. And the reassurance is usually that you are only using a little. But think about how these products actually get used. Body lotion goes on head to toe, every day, for nine months. That is not a small amount, that is your largest organ covered in something daily for most of a year. For many of these ingredients the topical risk is still called largely theoretical, but sit with why. It is not because anyone proved them safe on pregnant skin. It is because the research was never done. No one is studying what daily full body use does to a pregnancy, which is its own kind of alarming. So when a simple option exists, there is no reason to gamble on one nobody has bothered to look into.
Simple is the whole answer
This is where a short ingredient list stops being a marketing line and starts being useful. When a product has a few ingredients you recognize, there is nothing to cross-reference at midnight. When it has thirty, you are trusting all thirty, and whatever they do in combination. Pregnancy is not the season to take that on faith.
Your skin changes while you are expecting too. Hormones can leave it drier and more reactive, which is one more reason to strip your routine back to the essentials instead of piling on actives to chase every new shift.
My instincts came late, and then all at once
I wish I could tell you I worked this out while pregnant. I did not. It was after my children were born that something in me woke up. Suddenly I was reading the back of every bottle before it touched their skin, wondering what on earth I had been using without a thought. I was obsessive about breastfeeding, exclusively, because I cared so much about what went into them. It took me a little longer to see that the same question applied to what went onto them, and onto me.
That is the whole reason Organic Violet exists. It is the plain, food-simple skincare I wish I had reached for the first time around. Tallow, honey, and very little else. I keep essential oils to a minimum, partly because I am scent sensitive myself, and the plainest options, the Balm and the original Whipped, are just tallow, honey, and vitamin E, with no fragrance at all.
The honest part
I am not your doctor, and this is not medical advice. It is my story and the general information I wish someone had handed me. Run any product, mine included, past your OB or midwife before you use it. All I am really asking is that you extend the care you already give your plate to the things you rub into your skin.
For the record, my children came out perfectly healthy, and I am grateful every day for that. But healthy despite something is not the same as safe, and I got lucky in a place I should not have had to rely on luck. That is the whole reason I would rather you have the information I did not.
If you are reading this, that is proof we are collectively waking up to what the skincare industry would rather we not think about, the chemicals we assume are safe simply because they are easy to buy and no one is telling us otherwise. I am thankful my children will grow up with this information, ready to make better choices for themselves and their own children one day.
There is so much fear in motherhood right now, and this post is not meant to be one more source of it. It is just a resource, one more thing to help you make the best decision for yourself and your growing family. Knowledge is power, and mothers have been doing this since the beginning. Your body knows. Trust your instincts.