Pain vs. Harm

Today I was poking around on the cosmetics database website, which tells you about toxicity levels in different self-care and cosmetics. I was wondering about the toxicity levels of the new soap I bought for Clare at Babies R Us and how it compared to the soap we previously used, Avalon Organics Baby. I stumbled onto the listings of least toxic baby shampoo and soap and read one of the labels from the third least harmful soap. It said, "We do not add numbing chemicals, so this is not a tear free soap." I was shocked! At first I was stupidly shocked because I thought, "who makes soap that isn't tear free for babies?" then I realised how backwards this was and then freaked out realising, that if a soap isn't tear free it contains numbing chemicals and is actually interfering with my child's nervous system!!! WHAT THE HECK??

So I have to ask, when did this become acceptable? In my mind, allowing something to disrupt a natural pain reaction is pretty harmful. This is of course unless we're talking about having surgery or something like that. Usually our bodies react to pain because the stimulus is hurting us in some sense. So if we're numbing the pain stimulus isn't something wrong? Aren't we teaching our bodies to stop reacting to harmful things?
Furthermore, when companies say things like, "our products are mild, pure, and gentle" are they really being honest with you? Is something that numbs your baby's nervous system really gentle and mild?

So I guess I should probably just be more careful about getting soap in Clare's eyes when I give her a bath instead of getting soap with numbing agents that disrupt pain receptors. Heh!

This just got me thinking a lot about how our society deals with pain and how we've really become wimps, to the point of actually hurting ourselves more so that we don't have to deal with pain. I might eat my words in a few days if I totally cave and scream for an epidural in labor. Hopefully this doesn't happen and all that reading about natural childbirth and practicing relaxation techniques will actually work. But seriously, back to the pain and harm thing. Is pain really harmful? Not usually. Can we harm ourselves by numbing everything? Yes definitely.
At least I think so.


There's my random rant for the day. Yikes, numbing baby eyes!!!
Still makes me cringe to think about it.