When I got pregnant with my son in 2018, I despaired about how much my mind and body seemed to be changing, and at the same time sought out further change — for example, to my diet, my exercise regimen, and skincare routine. In this, I am not alone: Many women report a desire to revamp their routine or “go natural” when they learn they’re expecting to avoid potentially harmful chemicals or ingredients, especially those that might cross the placenta or enter into breastmilk.
But we’re left without a clear understanding of how to do that, what the risks are for certain active ingredients, and what products we actually should be swapping out. That’s why today I’m excited to share that Motherfigure is launching a pregnancy- and lactation-safe skincare ingredient database. Drawing on information and data from Cosmetic Ingredient Review, the FDA, the CDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics, National Library of Medicine, and lactation consultants, dermatologists, and more, the database is designed to answer families’ questions and to give people more agency on this journey — and to support them in probing further.
For me, my attempts to embrace pregnancy-safe — or at least pregnancy-friendly — skincare felt disempowering. I’m a former journalist, and I like to dive deep into questions. I spent untold hours scanning ingredient lists, searching for research articles, and asking friends (and Google) in vain attempts to understand what was recommended, what wasn’t, and why. But the answers I found were wanting, seemed designed to confuse, or else just weren’t clear. This coincided — of course! — with some real skincare needs, thanks to the surge of hormones attended by pregnancy and the postpartum period. I suddenly itched from my scalp to my shins. My lips became chronically chapped. I had near-constant flare-ups of rosacea.
Before I got pregnant, beauty had offered some refuge in the form of self-care. Now, it felt fraught. So I often erred on the side of caution, tossing creams and ointments that seemed to have mysterious ingredients, or else I panicked, worried I’d accidentally used something harmful.
Eventually, I realized that many of the things I panicked about were more nuanced than I first understood — for example, topicals or things that wash out are different than things that are ingested and enter the bloodstream; some topicals also break through those barriers more easily than others. In general, I need not have panicked, or beat myself up over the tradeoffs I was or was not making.
Moreover, most of the information I had found confusing actually *is* confusing, because skincare is not well regulated and not well studied in the perinatal population. As with medications, there is a dearth of research on the impact of skincare ingredients on pregnancy and lactation; some of this is because it’s difficult to design an ethical study, but it’s also because it’s not a “priority.” In short, there’s a lot we don’t know about the impact of skincare ingredients on a developing fetus or in human milk. But there’s plenty we do, and we’re just getting started putting information back into the hands of the moms who need it.
The database is available today, and we’ll keep adding to it. You can start browsing by searching for the active ingredients in your skincare products, and we’ll tell you what the research shows about its impact on pregnancy, lactation, and general health. In some cases, we’ll offer suggestions for swaps you can make. (Have feedback or a question? Email us at info@motherfigure.com)
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