Time to talk about using Aromatherapy oils as tools for motherhood

In this episode we explore the world of essential oils and how they can be valuable tools for mothers in their daily lives. She delves into five different essential oils and highlights the various ways they can benefit moms. 

1. **Lavender**: Known for its calming and soothing properties, lavender is safe for both moms and children. Amanda discusses how to use it to create a serene bedtime environment, relieve stress, and incorporate it into a relaxing bath.

2. **Peppermint**: With its refreshing and invigorating scent, peppermint is excellent for boosting energy and improving focus. Amanda shares how to use it in a diffuser and for digestive support.

3. **Frankincense**: Amanda explains how frankincense, often associated with spirituality, can benefit moms through mindfulness and meditation, skincare, and emotional support during challenging moments.

4. **Eucalyptus**: Eucalyptus oil is highlighted for its respiratory benefits. Amanda discusses ways to use it for congestion relief, homemade chest rubs, and creating a refreshing atmosphere in the home.

5. **Chamomile**: Chamomile's calming properties are explored, including its use in tea, relaxing baths, and soothing skin irritations, making it an excellent choice for stressed-out moms.

Amanda emphasizes the importance of using essential oils safely, especially around children, and suggests using carrier oils like grapeseed, sweet almond, or coconut oil for dilution. She also teases an upcoming live workshop on essential oils where she'll provide practical demonstrations and answer questions.

Transcript

Hello. Welcome to The Being Mum Podcast.


Thank you for joining me this week, we are going to be talking about essential oils and how these can be a fantastic tool that we can use to help us on a daily basis in various ways. And I'm gonna touch on 5 different oils today and let you know the different ways that you can use them and what the benefits are. And, yeah, let's get started. So the 1st oil I'm gonna talk about is lavender. I'm sure you've all heard of lavender. It's a big one. It is known for calming and soothing and relaxing. It's an ideal choice for moms to use because it's super safe. You can use it with children as well. It's one of those safe ones. So really, really multiuse here. So some of the things you can do is to help with bedtime. A lot of baby products will have it as well, the baby bath, the baby lotion.



These products were already gonna have it built in for you. Okay. So for you to use it for yourself, what you can do, is put a couple of drops of lavender oil into a diffuser. You can use that in your child's bedroom to help make a nice serene and peaceful environment, and it helps promote the good night's sleep for both you and your little one if you're sharing a room. Or if you want to put it in your room, the diffuser is one of these things you can move it about. They're very, very useful, so I would definitely recommend getting a diffuser. I've got 1 and I depending how I'm feeling, I'll use different oils in it to help my mood, to help me relax, to help Uplift Me.

So, yes, before bed, you can use lavender oil to help with creating that environment. So another way that you can use lavender is in a spray bottle. So you can put a couple of drops of lavender in just with some water in a spray mist bottle, and you can spray that onto near around the pillows, around the bed. You can buy these predone as well. They're available online in health shops. And it's just a relaxing pillow mist spray is what they call them, but they usually have lavender in there and they may have chamomile as well. And I'm gonna talk about chamomile later. Another thing that you can do is to buy these roll on little sticks, and they have a carrier oil and some Essential oils in there, usually lavender.

There's other different types that you can get. And, you can make one yourself just by mixing some lavender with a carrier oil. And you just massage it mum. Into your wrists, into around your temples, around the back of your neck. This helps ease stress. It promotes relaxation. So when you're having these hectic, busy, crazy, overwhelmed days, and you're feeling just overwhelmed and stressed, you can then give yourself a little sniff. The smell of it is just going to help bring you back to you, to help you bring you into the moment, and to help calm you.

Okay. So next, I'm going to talk about peppermint oil. It's, very refreshing. It's a very invigorating scent. It's very much gonna wake you up. And it's, You know, one of those ones, if you're feeling tired, it's gonna help boost your energy. Okay? You can use the peppermint in a diffuser, the same way as we talked about with the lavender. I would do that in the morning rather than the evening.

So then that's gonna help increase your awakeness, your alertness. It's gonna help boost your energy for the morning. So maybe if you wanna wake everybody up in the house, especially if you're early risers like my lot, then peppermint oil might be something you can do in a diffuser. The next way you can use it is to help with focus and concentration. So you can use the peppermint oil if you need To focus on something or if you're working from home because it helps improve your mental clarity and your concentration. So you can do the same as we did with the lavender with a roll on stick. You can buy these ones. The brand is called Tisserand, and it's Really, they have a whole selection of different roll on type ones that you can buy for different reasons.

So one's for relaxation, one's for de stressing. One's for focus and clarity. One's for just, you know, escapism if you like. They're very tropical in scent, so you You can just put them on and they they take you abroad to a beach somewhere. They're lovely. So the roll on is a fantastic way to have it out and about with you if you're needing that extra boost. So if you're a working mum and you want to you're going to a meeting and you just need that little perk before you go in, you can use it. Or if you're working on a presentation, That's a fantastic way for working mums to use it.

But also with with children, you know, especially in the afternoon slump where you've gotta pick them up from school, you maybe have to deal with the homework battles, And you just need a pick me up to help you focus because you have to think about phonics, and you have to think about reading and the different tricky words.  So you could use that for yourself as well. And maybe just seeing you do it will help your children because they'll start to have these habits as well. Another way that you can use peppermint is for digestive support. So it's really, really good for any kind of tummy troubles. There are different ways you can take it. You can get peppermint capsules.

You can get peppermint tea. It's obviously a lovely one. And having a peppermint tea after food can really help with digestive issues. So, you know, I'm sure you've heard of this before. You can also use it for massage. So you can put a little bit, few drops into oil and massage it gently in a clockwise motion over your abdomen, and that might help relieve some discomfort. So if you suffer from IBS, which is sort of stress related as moms, We get very worked up, don't we? And we hold a lot of stress in our gut because that's where we our emotional center is. So you can do these massages, and it's just circular clockwise motions around with the peppermint oil in a carrier oil.


And, yeah, that will help. So another lovely oil that we can use for helping us in our motherhood journey is frankincense. There is, a long history with using frankincense for grounding, for Spirituality. It's got very uplifting qualities, but I want to tell you how you can use it as a mum. So obviously, with mindfulness and meditation, you can use it in a diffuser. So likewise. We're gonna use this diffuser a lot, aren't we? But it is such a useful tool. That's why I recommend you getting one.

And they're not expensive, honestly. Just pop on to Amazon, Find 1. And they're so easy to use because you just put some water in and add a few drops. It's such a simple way. So please, if you do anything and take anything from This episode, it's get yourself a diffuser to use some essential oils in. So yes. So you can pop a few drops of frankincense in when you're doing any kind of meditation or mindfulness practice or if you're doing yoga at home in the mornings or during the day.

And it sort of has an earthy aroma to it, and it helps you stay centered. It helps reduce feelings of anxiety. Just very, very nice and balancing. It's a lovely one. Another way you can use it is in skin care. Frankincense oil is fantastic for rejuvenating your skin. And as mums, we always look tired, and we're usually dehydrated, and so we get little fine lines, the dehydration lines, and just we just look a bit tired. So it's fantastic to just put a few drops into your moisturiser, and that will help rejuvenate your skin.

It's really excellent at helping with reducing those appearance of fine lines and just maintaining a healthy sort of glow. So that's a lovely way for us mums to use it. And then the other way It is for emotional support, and this is something I did use a lot when my mum had cancer. We would use, frankincense. So I had roll ons for her so she just had it on her little table beside her in the bed, and she would roll it on her wrists to help her feel a sort of emotional stability, I guess, you can call it. You can use a couple of drops into any kind of carrier oil or massage oil and use that to help you feel good. Even if it's Just, putting it in with your hand moisturizer. It's, really lovely to provide that sort of emotional support during challenging moments.

So for us mums, if you're feeling stressed because you're doing the school run, have that hand moisturiser in your bag. And you can pop that on or a roll on if you're struggling at tea time because I I definitely struggle with mealtimes. They're very challenging. You can have some, frankincense beside the sink or in the kitchen somewhere so that you can use that roll on there, or you can have the hand cream and give a little quick hand massage just to calm you and just give that emotional support to yourself. It's, it's a lovely oil to use. So I would definitely recommend, checking that one out. 

Then next, I would love to talk about eucalyptus. Eucalyptus is really fantastic one for any kind of respiratory things. So for mums, we find that really useful, don't we? Especially this time of year coming into winter where there's lots of sniffles and colds and flus, and everyone's just getting a little bit snotty, aren't we? My my kids have a permanent snot trail, the younger one especially. So you can use it for congestion relief. A few drops of eucalyptus oil in a bowl of hot water, and you just inhale the steam. It helps ease any congestion, and it is safe for, older children to use this method as well. You can buy little products that have it in there. So for us, we would use vix vapor rub.

But for children, it's called Snuffle Babe, and it has these kind of oils in there. It'll have peppermint. It'll have eucalyptus,  in there. And you just rub some of it on their chest, on their back. And another point I use it is on their feet as well. I put it on the soles of their feet. So that's fantastic. So for a homemade chest rub, you can just mix a few drops of eucalyptus oil with some coconut oil, and that will help soothe them if they've got coughs or colds, and it just gives them a little bit of comfort.

And I think that touch, that physical massage of putting the rub on really connects with them in that moment and just makes them feel good. It's like giving them a little kiss, a magic kiss, or putting on sudacream on their little wounds if they've scraped their knee or things like that. It's that extra touch. It's that extra connection that makes them feel good, but the smell of the eucalyptus helps them feel good as well. 

And then the last 1 I wanna talk about today is chamomile essential oil. It's very well known for its calming and soothing properties, And it can be a lifesaver for moms when we're feeling stressed and overwhelmed. So tea is, probably the most common way of using it. So you can buy the tea bags and brew a cup of chamomile tea. You can add a drop of chamomile oil for an extra boost of relaxation. So after a long day, if you want to put some maybe into a bath, that would be lovely. So if you're running yourself a warm bath, you can add a few drops of chamomile oil and maybe some Epsom salts, and that will feel quite luxurious. And it'll help melt away any stress and any tension. And another way to use it as well is to help if there's any kind of skin irritations. So you can add a drop of chamomile oil for an extra boost to any creams that you're using.

So if you're putting baby lotion on the baby and they have some sensitive skin issues, maybe like a nappy rash or any irritations if they've had little scuffs. I know when they're learning to crawl or when they're walking for my one. He's 18 months, and he's bumping into everything. There seems to be little red marks on his head where he's banging himself or little marks where he's falling over. So you just pop some chamomile oil into his lotion, and a lot of the lotions will have it in there already if you're buying the baby lotions. And it just helps Soothe away those irritations and take away some of that redness. If they've got very sensitive skin, that can be really calming to use. So, yeah, there you have it.

Those are 5 essential oils, and some of the practical ways that you can use them to help with motherhood and to help with your mum life experience. You know, obviously, there's a disclaimer with this. You've got to use essential oils with care, especially around children.  Always make sure that you're diluting it properly or with a carrier oil. So you can use, grapeseed oil is neutral and very, very common to use for it tends to work with everybody. You can use sweet almond oil, which is very moisturizing if you're using it for skincare. So with the Frankincense. I would probably put that into some sweet almond oil as long as you're not allergic to nuts, because the sweet almond oil is also very nourishing for your skin and it's gonna enhance the effect of the frankincense, and you can use coconut oil as well.

So those would be the carrier oils I would probably suggest you use if you're gonna do this from home and make these yourself. And then, obviously, if you've got any questions or concerns, then talk to a qualified aromatherapist or health care professional you have to say these things, don't you? But, you You know, these are pretty safe oils that I've suggested. These are pretty common. These are ones that are used in homes and, places across the world every day by lots of people. So I I've chosen very safe ones that I think you shouldn't have any issues with. So I hope that these, essential oil tips, will help you, and you can add them in to find an extra tool in your little kit to help you with managing stress, with managing to relax, to manage the challenging moments throughout your days, and, I really hope that you enjoyed this episode. I am gonna be doing a workshop on essential oils where, it will be a video workshop because then I can actually show you these products and how I use them. And sometimes you just want that visual aid to see.

If I'm showing you how I'm doing it, then it might help. So if you're interested in taking part in that workshop, it will be live one that I'll run so you can see me and talk to me, and we can do questions and answers at the end. Drop me an email. Come along to to the Being Mum tribe because I'll be including it for my group. So if you go on to Facebook and join the Being Mum tribe, you will find out all the details that way. And, yeah. I, hope you have a lovely weekend.