If you have ever turned over a bottle of baby lotion and needed a chemistry degree to read the label, you are not alone. A lot of parents end up looking for something shorter, and whipped tallow balm is about as short as skincare gets. Here is what it is, what it can honestly do, and the conversations to have before you put anything new on a baby.
The jar parents ask us about is the plain one: our Unscented Whipped Tallow, which contains exactly two things: grass fed beef tallow and organic coconut oil. No water, no preservatives, no emulsifiers, no fragrance.
Start with your pediatrician, not with us
We want to be plain about this before anything else, because it matters more than any ingredient list.
Infant skin is thinner and more permeable than adult skin, and we are a small family balm maker, not your child's doctor. We are not going to tell you that our product is safe for your baby. Ask your pediatrician or health visitor before introducing any new topical product, particularly on a newborn, on broken skin, or if there is anything ongoing going on with your baby's skin. If they say go ahead, patch test a small amount on one spot and wait a day before using it more widely.
That is not us being cagey. It is the honest position for anyone selling a cosmetic to a parent.
What a balm like this actually does
A moisturizer is not doing anything clever. It sits on the surface and slows water leaving the skin, which is why skin looks and feels less dry and tight afterwards. Occlusive moisturizers work by slowing water loss through the outer layer of skin, which holds only about ten to thirty percent water in the first place compared with roughly eighty percent in the layers underneath (Moisturizers, StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf). That is the whole mechanism, for babies and adults alike.
Tallow is rendered beef fat, and its fatty acid profile is close to what human skin produces on its own, which is part of why a small amount sinks in rather than sitting as a greasy film. Grass fed tallow naturally carries the fat soluble vitamins A, D, E and K2 as part of the fat itself, with nothing added in a lab.
Two ingredients. Nothing else on the label.
Grass fed tallow and organic coconut oil, whipped by hand in Loomis, California. Fragrance free, because a baby's routine should be.
If you have been given the go ahead, here is the routine
- Patch test first. One small spot, one day of waiting, before anything wider.
- Apply after the bath. A pea sized amount, warmed between your fingers until it turns to oil, smoothed over skin that is still slightly damp.
- Stick to dry looking areas. Cheeks, arms, legs, elbows. There is no need to cover a whole baby in balm.
- Use less than you think. Whipped tallow is concentrated, and a thin layer does the job a thick one does, only more comfortably.
- Keep it off hands that go straight into a mouth, which is most hands, most of the time.
- Go back to your pediatrician for anything that is spreading, weeping, painful, or simply not settling. A moisturizer is not the tool for that job and we are not going to pretend it is.
What to look for in a balm for a baby
- Unscented, always. Essential oils are lovely for adults and we use them in our own scented jars, but a baby's routine should skip them. Our Lemon + Lavender Whipped Tallow is for the grown ups in the house.
- Grass fed tallow, so the naturally occurring fat soluble vitamins are actually in there.
- A whipped texture, which spreads in a thin even layer without dragging on delicate skin.
- A maker you can ask questions of. We render and whip every jar ourselves in Loomis, California. If you want to know where the tallow comes from, write to us and we will tell you.
One jar the whole household can share
The quiet bonus of a two ingredient balm is that it is not only for the baby. The same jar works on a parent's cracked hands, wind chapped cheeks after a stroller walk, and rough elbows at the end of a long week. Plenty of parents keep one jar on the changing table and a tube of Lip Relief in the changing bag for themselves.
Who is making this
We are Jeremie and Megan. Every batch is rendered and whipped by hand in small runs in Loomis, California, and our name is on the jar. If a jar does not suit you, tell us and we will make it right. That is the whole promise and it is deliberately short.
Start with the simplest jar we make.
Or look through the whole whipped tallow range for the grown ups in the house.
Want the 10% off code first? Pop your email in and we will send it over, along with the occasional note from the kitchen.