At our daughter’s 18 month check-up, the nurse asked if there was anything that concerned me. I said that I was a bit worried about her speech development, thinking, “Oh, this is silly! Different children speak at different points…” The nurse asked if she’d had a lot of colds over the winter (she and her Dad caught every cold there was to catch) and then suggested a quick visit to the audiologist, just to set our minds at ease.

A few weeks later, we had our appointment and headed off to see the lovely Liz at Yarra Health. She looked into H’s ears and said she definitely saw middle ear infection, but we needed to look into it more to see if there was hearing loss. She explained that the machine we were about to use tested the echo inside the middle ear, which needed for there to be air in there, not just liquid, and that we should see a peak on the screen. She did the test. We saw a flat, flat line, with a tiny blip. Our daughter’s hearing was pretty seriously impaired.

Liz told us she didn’t really need to do the next test to tell us there was hearing loss that was significant, but that it would tell us more specifically where the loss was. She conditioned our girl with a loud noise off to the side and a puppet (she worked that one out quickly — she’s a smart cookie) and then ratcheted the sound right down. H’s head only turned once the sound got back up to 25db, on both sides, a loss of about 40%. She thought the liquid inside the eardrum was probably “like concrete”.

Our next move, apparently, was a trip to an ear, nose and throat specialist. Our referral to a great surgeon at the Royal Melbourne Children’s Hospital was useless: there weren’t any appointments for about three months, unless we wanted to go private. Our complication was two-fold: we were flying to the US about six weeks later and we didn’t have private health insurance (because we live in a country where you can mostly rely on the awesome public system). We called around until we found a private surgeon who could see us before we flew. Our main question was whether she could fly with her ears the way they were. His advice was no, we risked a burst eardrum mid-air, which sounded like misery for the whole family.

His recommendation was for simple surgery to insert grommets, relieving the pressure in the eardrum and allowing the liquid inside to drain. So we called the grandparents and asked for a loan and booked in for the private surgery after all. Not my favourite moment: general anaesthetic for a 19 month old, no matter how short, is awful. I held her in my arms while they put the gas mask over her face and told her to breathe in. Her eyes slowly rolled back and she started to snore and then she was completely limp. They took her from me and the next time I saw her, in recovery, she was screaming in a nurse’s arms, frantic to know where Mama was. Thank god for “extended” breastfeeding; I was able to give her instant comfort in the form of Mama’s milk.

She recovered well from the immediate physical effects of surgery. The day afterwards, she was joyfully signing “bird! bird!” every few seconds because she could hear them again. A few days afterwards, she was already saying Mama more often, and starting to try other words. Two weeks later, we were on a plane.

The change since then is phenomenal. She says “boo” and “shoe” properly now. She has also added “two” and just to diverge from the rhyme, “zebra”, “flower”, “vulture”, “book” complete with the ‘k’ on the end (that one’s new today). She’s been saying “papa” for “pasta” since about two days after the operation. It seems there’s a new word every day. She said her own name today, complete with the aspirated H at the front today. She says “Mama’s dchone” for “Mama’s phone”. She said “My dadda shoes” and pointed at his shoes. The funniest one so far sounded a hell of a lot like, “Mama, Dadda di a far”. Considering he’d just made a loud noise of a certain type, that was accurate too.

Our follow-up with the audiologist in tomorrow, eight weeks since the first appointment, if I recall correctly. Let’s see what the science says… As far as the Mama’s concerned though, it’s all good.

The food and wellness diary is my second choice of diagnostic tool. My first, is the two-day low-allergen elimination diet described in “Infant Food Sensitivity: step-by-step self-diagnosis“. The diary is more work, takes more time to get a result, and requires more knowledge (or help) to interpret than the two-day exclusion diet. However, on the plus side, it’s completely safe, easier on your eating requirements, can be used in conjunction with whatever else you are doing, and can help you come to a more detailed understanding of the situation.

What to record

A breastfed infant’s basic food sensitivity diary only needs to record four things:

1. time and date
2. Mother’s intake
3. Baby’s intake
4. Baby’s condition

Keeping it simple, you can rule up four columns in an exercise book. I like to rule a horizontal line at the bottom of each day to make scanning back through the diary easier. While you can use “day 1, day 2…” I find actual dates simpler to use in the long run. Time doesn’t have to be exact, morning/afternoon/night is ok.

Mother’s intake includes everything you put in your mouth: food, drinks, supplements, et cetera. If you want to understand what food additives are in your diet, you can paste the ingredients section of your food labels in there (or just write them out). You only need to paste it once, and refer to that product by name after that. It can be good to give an indication of amount (trace/some/lot) as this may be helpful later.

Baby’s intake also includes anything which goes in their mouth, including nursing, solids, drinks, et cetera. If you are giving baby expressed breastmilk, record the date on which the milk was expressed.

Baby’s condition includes observing everything which might be food-related including symptoms like these.

The souped-up version

When I’m feeling a little overwhelmed or sleep-deprived, I find myself wanting to use a super-detailed spreadsheet to format my food diary. (Here’s a sample I prepared earlier.) It’s more work to set up, but it’s a dream to use — it reminds me what to observe, and most observations are of the yes/no or high/medium/low variety. Your spreadsheet might include:

1. Date/time
2. Mother’s Intake
(a) Safe Foods (list all foods you consumed in this period which you believe to be safe, based on experience)
(b) Unknown Foods
(c) Drinks
(d) Supplements, medication, other
3. Baby’s Intake
(a) Nursing (how much)
(b) Expressed breastmilk (amount and date expressed)
(c) Solids
4. Baby’s Condition
(a) Contented, alert, happy?
(b) Sleeping
(c) Skin
(d) Other notes

Active testing

To be most effective, use your food and wellness diary in conjunction with some elimination experimentation. Using the diary without intervention will remind you which unusual things that you ate might be related to baby’s condition. But if you want to learn which of your regular foods may be having an effect, you’ll need to have a period of time without them.

Hopefully, it won’t be long before you have answers and a happily nursing baby. Good luck!

An allergen is anything the body is allergic to.

Allergens are not (necessarily) bad/junky or contaminated foods. Even the very best good healthy foods are an allergen for someone. While allergens can come to the baby through breastmilk, in general, the mother’s body acts as a filter, turning all sorts of rubbish (from junk food to contaminated water) into healthy, nutritious baby milk. In fact, even if mum has food poisoning, breastfeeding should continue.

How do you do the test?

It’s easy, actually:

Breastfeeding Mother: eat nothing but plain rice and peeled pears, and drink nothing but plain water for a couple of days.

Breastfed Infant: should nurse, but can also be offered cooled pre-boiled water and peeled pears without compromising the test.

Do not offer previously expressed breastmilk, if you can help it, as you won’t know what you ate the day it was expressed.

Artificial colours, flavours and other ingredients in baby paracetamol (and other products you may be using to ease baby’s distress) are also possible allergens. Paracetamol is no longer being used as routinely for children as it once was. I’d consider giving the paracetamol a break during the test. But please continue any prescription medications as directed.

It’s working!

If your hunch about an infant food sensitivity is correct, you will often observe an improvement in nursing behaviour in just a couple of days. Food allergens can take minutes, hours or days to cause a reaction. Also, depending on type, it can take hours, days or weeks after you cease consuming a particularly allergen for your system to be clear of it.

Two days is not a definitive time period. But a hungry, thirsty, miserable baby will be willing to give the boobie a damn good go, if you can noticeably reduce the badness for them. Two days without topping up on the allergens is often enough for this. Two days is also an achievable period of time to be on an extremely restrictive diet before you go CRAZY!!

Is rice and peeled pears a hard and fast rule?

No. There’s nothing magical about rice and pears. Those foods are typically used to kick off an elimination diet as they are about the least allergenic foods we know, but it’s possible (though extremely unlikely) to be allergic to them.

It’s technically possible to spend two days fasting on nothing but water. The production of breastmilk has minimum hydration and rest requirements, but no minimum maternal nutrition requirements. But I would certainly not recommend you try it.

If you need help making it through the two days, you can add foods to the test, but each ingredient you add decreases the likelihood of a clear and immediate result. When I did it, I added butter to my rice. Many people with a dairy allergy can (for whatever reason) tolerate butter.

Interpreting results from the test

You are primarily looking for an improvement in nursing behaviour. Are nursing sessions longer, more relaxed, with less screaming, biting and back arching? Is there an improvement in overall behaviour and a reduction in your baby’s distress?

Yes, these observations are very subjective, and not the stuff of scientific experiment. But it’s your child, you love them, and you need them to be happy — so your instincts on these things are often right.

Beyond nursing-related behaviours, I wouldn’t agonize trying to look for a lot of other evidence of change in just two days. It’s too soon to expect to see visible skin signs clear up, and baby’s fear of the pain will continue to affect their behaviour. Hunger will motivate them to nurse, however miserable they may feel. These other symptoms all add to the picture if/when you get to keeping a food diary.

What to do after a positive result

If your fasting (and restricting baby’s solids) is giving your precious child some relief, then naturally, you are not just going to revert back after two days. But you can’t continue to eat only rice and peeled pears either.

In my case, I took a punt and tried adding back all low salicylate foods. Salicylates are one of the food patterns which can assist in elimination diet testing. By testing for salicylates first, I was able to add back several foods at once.

Luckily for us, salicylates have proven to be the key to our problem. When I mistakenly eat something which is high in salicylates, my baby visibly suffers from it and his temperature rises as his immune response kicks in. I had a tense few days testing whether the “medium salicylate” fruit and vegetables were going to be a problem for us, and I’m glad to say that they are not.

Other sources which may be helpful include fed up and friendly food.

The negative result

If there is no change in baby’s nursing behaviour, the result is slightly less informative. How pure were you about only having rice, peeled pear and water? Did you use preserved pears with a food additive? Were you taking any other supplements or medications? Did baby have anything other than breastmilk, water and peeled pear? Was two days simply not enough for baby’s particular type of allergen to be flushed out sufficiently for their constitution to notice an improvement? Is baby allergic to the pears?

Again, trust your instincts. If you feel that you gave it a good go, then it might simply be something else.

What next?

However you choose to proceed, you might find it helpful to keep a food and wellness diary to keep track of your success. No matter what happened with the test, at least you have one more piece of information for your doctor (eg. “I experimented with eating only rice and pears for two days, and it didn’t seem to make any difference.”).

Phthalates are an ingredient in consumer plastics, despite the scientific debate around their potential to be endocrine disruptors.   As with BPA there is insufficient labeling of phthalates to assist consumers who would like to choose to play it safe. We all have phthalate metabolites in our urine – evidence of phthalate exposure – the only question is “how much?”

Phthalate esters are plasticisers widely used for a whole host of applications in a wide range of products, including PETE (Recycle 1) food containers, PVC (Recycle 3) building materials and in personal care products (for the various emulsifying/gelling/suspension/dispersion/lubricant qualities and to make fragrances last longer). What’s a plasticiser? It’s designed to soften hard plastics. In other words, it’s one of the ingredients that makes lovely squishy baby toys squishy.

Children’s exposure is higher than adults’. Babies’ mouthing behaviour, the use of baby care products, the higher dosage-for-size, the lower metabolic capability and their still-developing endocrine and reproductive systems combine to make babies much more susceptible to potential effects. There’s also evidence to suggest that pregnant women might want to be careful too (see below).

Identification of phthalate use is non-existent in many product categories, especially building materials and food packaging. Without a statement from the manufacturer, only gas chromatography can confirm the presence or absence of phthalates. I am not aware of any handy services which allow consumers to bring in a small sample of their old vinyl flooring from home to be tested.

The international regulatory environment is fractured. Unfortunately, where consumers would prefer caution and transparency, a ban in one jurisdiction is typically met with evidentiary hair-splitting and self-justification in others. Commercial interests continue to be protected by the ongoing obfuscation of phthalate use. Meanwhile consumers who would like to choose to be cautious have no viable way of accurately identifying their phthalate exposure.

The effects of phthalates on humans are still under investigation. They are thought to be endocrine disruptors, linked to ‘fetal changes’, insulin resistance, metabolic disruption and allergies and asthma in children. See Wikipedia: phthalate for details.

There is clearly a lack of good faith dialogue between consumer concerns and commercial interests in the area of phthalates. Even finding words to describe this issue simply and accurately is difficult. What does “fetal changes” mean? I certainly hope I didn’t accidentally misuse someone’s jargon there. It would have been simpler to say “birth defects” but those words are both alarmist, and they have a specific scientific meaning. Wikipedia cites a study which found human phthalate exposure during pregnancy resulted in decreased anogenital distance among baby boys. That sounds like evidence of potential birth defects to me. Wikipedia goes on to say:

“An editorial concerning this paper in the same volume stated that the study population was small, and “needs to be investigated more thoroughly in a larger, more diverse population”. While anogenital distance is routinely used as a measure of fetal exposure to endocrine disruptors in animals, this parameter is rarely assessed in humans, and its significance is doubtful.”

The American Chemistry Council’s Q&A however, assures us that this study “failed to establish a causal link”. It  also says:

“Q. Aren’t phthalates endocrine disruptors?
A. In lab tests with rodents, phthalates do not block the action of male or female hormones, or mimic their behavior.” [full stop, next question]

Perhaps the answer is to be found with Our Stolen Future, which argues the need for a paradigm shift in the methods, assumptions and standards used in assessing the safety of phthalate esters.

Phthalates are easily released from plastics, but they don’t hang around long out-doors. Their low solubility in water, and the fact that an adult can metabolise them in minutes, are also probably contributing factors informing the traditional view that phthalates are safe to use in plastics. It’s also worth mentioning that phthalate release from plastics increases as the plastic degrades over time and in sunlight. Phthalate release from vinyl flooring is increased by the use of polish, and the phthalates also hang around in dust. The low solubility of phthalates in water may explain why PETE is the main choice of plastic for commercially bottled water and soft drinks. However, with the high solubility of phthalates in oil, I am very concerned that PETE (aka Polyethylene terephthalate) is also the packaging of choice for cooking oil in my local supermarket.

More technical information (and referencing) is available in the Wikipedia: Phthalates article. What are some phthalate-reduction suggestions?

Reducing my family’s phthalate exposure
There are plenty of websites on how to reduce your phthalate exposure. Just Google “phthalate free” or “avoid phthalate”. I don’t think it’s possible to avoid phthalates completely, and any advice on this topic is values-laden and context-specific. So this list is most relevant to me and people like me.

Reduce baby’s direct exposure: don’t use baby care products (unless you’ve read the contents and the container is glass or you’ve checked the container’s plastic type). This is easier than you might think, since most baby wash, baby shampoo, baby moisturizer, baby powder, nappy cream, baby cologne, et cetera is completely unnecessary. I use bath oil, bicarbonate of soda and sometimes a little nappy cream and that’s all.

Don’t give baby any PVC vinyl products to play with, wear, eat from or sleep on. This includes toys, bibs, art smocks, rain coats, nappy covers, change mats, mattress protectors, plastic table protectors, hand bags, shoes, cubby-houses, place mats and funky bean-bags. Sure, not all PVC contains phthalates, but phthalates are the cheapest and most commonly used plasticisers in PVC, so unless a product is very specifically marketed as Phthalate Free it probably does contain them.

Reduce the phthalate levels in your home environment by avoiding the use of vinyl flooring. If you have a good condition vinyl floor, avoid dust build up, and DO NOT use floor polish products. This is important, there are studies linking phthalate exposure to the use of floor polish. My place is cleaned with nothing stronger than eucalyptus oil, a mop and a vacuum cleaner. Another common use of vinyl you might not think of is your shower curtain. I made my own using some bargain nylon dressmaking fabric – it’s beautiful and it works just fine.

My family gets cars second hand, and I’m sure this helps too. Vinyl is used extensively in cars and that new car smell which lasts anything up to a couple of years is quite revolting to my nostrils. I don’t have a definitive reference as to the off-gassing profile on cars over time, or if phthalates can reliably be detected by smell. I can say with certainty that you should avoid dashboard polish products. I get my car cleaned occasionally, but I don’t let them do the inside any more, as they invariably use polish products.

Ventilation is important. This includes your home and your car. Houses are little pollution traps and the outside air is usually cleaner. Sunlight also degrades phthalates. If the weather or other local conditions make it impossible for you to ventilate daily, you’ll need to pay a lot more attention to removing phthalates from your home.

Personal care products, including cosmetics, also deserve a mention. Your own health is worth looking after, and pregnant women might be especially interested in their phthalate exposure. Nail polish, hair spray and perfumes keep coming up as the main sources of phthalates in cosmetics. But it’s not that simple. According to think before you pink, the trade secrets loophole allows any fragranced cosmetic product to contain phthalates without explicitly listing them. Personally, I’ve been seeking fragrance-free products for years. The only cosmetics I use these days are a simple olive oil soap, organic toothpaste, an unpackaged sulphate-free conditioner base and occasionally some Sorboline.

Polyethylene terephthalate: PETE and polyester. I don’t know enough about the potential for phthalates to off-gas or leach from PETE and polyester, but it’s definitely on my list of things to check out. At the moment I’m making sure that I buy my cooking oil in glass, and I’m trying to reduce my reliance on those handy little pop-top drinking bottles. I’m also making a point of not leaving drink bottles to heat up in the car, throwing them away at the first hint of a smell, and not re-using them too many times. I haven’t yet seen enough evidence to get me riffling through the baby clothes to weed out the polyester. I’m not buying any more polyester if I can help it, but culling the existing clothes would be a big undertaking. [Ed: I do avoid all polyester clothes already.]

It’s not easy being a mum. Nurse, teacher, bodyguard, lawyer, and now, apparently, I get to be a research chemist as well!

It seems I’m going to be “chemical girl” for a while.  Not my favourite thing, but this is so important.  Today’s topic is nano-technology.  This is mainly a “heads up” to say that it exists, and some specific action on sunscreens.

First up, before you do anything else, check whether your brand of baby sunscreen is safe, with the Friends of the Earth’s Safe Sunscreen Guide. And while we’re on the topic of FOE resources, you might like to check out their Consumers’ Guide to Biphesenol-A too.

The point about nano-tech is this: even though nano chemicals are known to behave differently from their non-nano counterparts, there is no regulation covering their development and application.  No safety testing is required.  In the case of zinc oxide, the active ingredient in sunscreens, the non-nano version is known to be safe and helpful.  The nano version, however, is thought to create free radicals when exposed to UV light, which will cause DNA and skin damage.

According to Friends of the Earth, nano technology:

1. has unknown effects on humans;
2. application is experiencing explosive growth;
3. is unregulated;
4. does not require safety testing.

It seems that our babies, right now, are set to become the Petri dish of the nano experiment.

Nano-applications available right now

• Silver Nano in household appliances
• Nano-zinc is used to make sunscreens transparent
• Nano elements in high-tech clothing can make things wrinkle/spill/stain/smell-resistant

In fact there are thousands of different applications of nano-tech on the market — with no guarantees of safety testing on any of it.  Key areas to take an interest in are nano in food & packaging, clothing, personal care products and bedding.

Now I’m not saying that all nanotechnology is bad, but I am saying that its effects are largely unknown.  So for me, I’m going to take note of where I see it, and avoid it wherever possible.

I’ve noticed I have a pattern around a lot of debates like this. I do research, find out what the scientists and peak bodies think, read the arguments from the really crunchy hippies, and then pick what feels intuitively most nurturing but still matches the science.

That how I’ve ended up a big breastfeeding advocate. The World Health Organization agrees that breast is best and further that breastfeeding should continue (accompanied by safe solids) up until baby is two years of age and may continue beyond that for best health outcomes. It suggests exclusive breastfeeding until six months. The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a revised policy in 2005 that also called for exclusive breastfeeding until six months. It’s important to note the wording though: it says juice, water, solid food etc is “generally unnecessary” for children under six months.

This has meant that some people seem to say, “Baby is six months old today! Solid food for you!”. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I want to know what it is that’s magically happening “around six months” that leads to this readiness for food.

The attachment parenting guru, Dr Sears, gives some reasons: baby’s ‘tongue thrust reflex’ (medically known as the extrusion reflex) is gone and the gut has started to go through ‘closure’. Gut closure refers to the lining of the gut which stops microscopic antigens entering the blood stream (my favourite quote on this was that it “is the process by which the epithelial surfaces of the intestine become impermeable to antigens”). A very quick search suggested that in most humans, gut closure starts before birth, because premature babies have more issue with macro antigens entering the blood stream whether they are breastfed or not. Fascinatingly, though, breastfeeding, and especially colostrum, that fabulous early milk, may actually trigger gut closure which is why breastfed babies may have fewer allergies. It’s chock full of secretory IgA hormone which helps stimulate the baby’s enzymes. Where does this four-to-eight month thing come in then? What’s this six month magic marker?

Interestingly, it seems possible that gut closure completion  is triggered by the introduction of solid food. I don’t have a link for this just yet, as the article that suggested it is behind locked walls and I haven’t had time to read the full reference, but that would suggest we’re looking for other physical signs, then we introduce the solid food, and then the gut realises what’s going on and does its thing. Certainly, in other animals, gut closure is triggered by weaning.

My darling daughter is now five-and-a-half months old. We have a lot of allergies in our family. Between my sisters, nieces and nephews, we have soy, dairy and wheat allergies and my partner is allergic to anything with fur or feathers (skin sensitivity), allergic to arrowroot (as a food and as a skin irritant) and lactose intolerant. She’s sitting up unaided, watching us eat with rivetted attention and most importantly, grabbing at food. Naturally, I’m hesitant to introduce solids if my darling is going to have allergic reactions. The “common knowledge” about this is that you shouldn’t introduce things like egg and peanuts until baby is at least a year old. Based on the latest research, though, the common knowledge is wrong. The Infant Feeding Advice from the Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy says there is insufficient evidence that delaying allergenic foods helps prevent allergies and acknowledges that there is some suggestion recently that delaying such foods can increase allergies. (Who knows how, given the whole gut closure discussion…)

So, with yet another lots of conflicting advice whirling through poor mama’s head, where does that leave us? I think it leaves us as follows:

• Keep on breastfeeding, as it’s the best source of vitamins and minerals for her and the World Health Organization says it has all the nutrients she needs for survival.
• She’s showing all the signs that she’s ready to start eating, even though she doesn’t need food yet. Start giving her tiny pieces of low allergen foods (carrot, potato, rice, pumpkin) to trigger the completion of gut closure.
• Introduce each food as a food on its own, in the morning, as recommended by Dr Sears, and watch carefully for allergic reactions. If none are seen, that food goes onto the list of foods okay to combine with other foods.
• Continue with baby-led weaning. (Note that this is weaning onto solid foods and not off breastmilk.) She’s already licked a few foods — cucumber, carrot — but we’ll follow her lead with how much she wants.
• After she hits six months, but not necessarily on the day, offer her an actual meal of solid food, with selections of items she’s not allergic to, and see how she goes.
• Delay those allergenic foods to eight months, just to give that gut closure a chance to happen but not worry too much about delaying further, based on ASCIA’s recommendation.

Your baby will have her or his own individual signs that he or she is ready to eat. Pay attention to them. Some babies don’t sit up unaided until almost nine months. If yours is one of them, and he or she is NOT reaching for food, there may be no need to start him or her on it yet. And remember that information changes as research occurs. This information is current as of July 2009. If you’re reading this more than a year down the track and we haven’t updated it, check our sources for up-to-date information or hassle us to find out the latest.

For example, Bisphenol A (BPA) is an ingredient in plastics which are currently defined as food-grade. Minute amounts of BPA are believed to have a hormone-like effect on the body’s endocrine system, possibly causing chronic toxicity, and a bunch of other things (see this Wikipedia page for much more detail, including a list of studies).

BPA is in epoxy resin (the lining of all food cans) and polycarbonate, the strong, clear plastics used for water bottles and baby bottles. Internationally, the regulations on BPA vary wildly, from a complete ban through to statements saying that it’s safe. This is one area where we can’t just trust the regulators to protect us.

The release of BPA from polycarbonates is increased by putting the plastic under stress, such as detergents, microwaving, dishwasher, sunshine, physical stress, and high temperature. Many regulators have gone down the path of saying that BPA polycarbonates are ok when used in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions. To me this seems inadequate, when the standard household dishwashing detergent is a harsh chemical. I don’t know anyone who uses “Velvet pure soap” (for example) as the only soap in their kitchen sink. And there is a recently slashdoted study of humans drinking from polycarbonate water bottles AT ROOM TEMPERATURE for two weeks, and coming up with measurable levels of BPA in their urine.

It is very difficult to avoid BPA completely. Even strawberries grown in polycarbonate greenhouses have been found to have BPA contamination. However, the highest average intake of PBA in humans is in infants and children, right when they are most vulnerable. There are a couple of key things you can do to reduce their exposure to BPA.

1) Don’t use a polycarbonate bottle, if you are bottle feeding. Yes, this will take some research. Don’t assume anything. Even brands that have introduced BPA-free models, like Avent, still have BPA-filled versions on the shelf too.

2) Check any other baby plastics you are using (spoons, sippy cups, ice-cube trays, etc) for their recycle symbol. Polycarbonates have the Recycle 7 symbol.

3) Check the Recycle symbol on pre-packaged foods, such as yoghurt, juice, water, etc. Avoid the No. 7 plastics, especially if they are the strong, clear plastics.

4) Offer fresh, non-wrapped foods as much as possible. ALL cans of food are lined with BPA epoxy resins.

5) When using commercial baby foods, go for the little glass jars and not the tins or plastics. Sadly, even the lids of baby food jars are lined in epoxy resin BPA plastics (so I don’t scrape the food off the lid any more) but this is better than being completely encased in it.

The more you look into it, the more you will find that it’s virtually impossible to completely avoid BPA. But don’t let that depress you. We deal with situations like this all the time at work. Use the 80-20 rule initially, and then go for continuous improvement as the resources (like adequate sleep) become available.