Now with all-natural Deadly Nightshade!
Right now Evie is enjoying the dreams of the innocent aided by the careful application of a deadly and rather notorious poison.
Now, please, put the phone down. Do not call child protective services. Evie has begun teething and is enduring the pain and irritability that come with that wonderful stage of infant development. Baby Momma picked up some all-natural, homeopathic teething gel yesterday and—lo and behold—Belladonna (AKA Deadly Nightshade) is one of the active ingredients.
Belladonna. Belladonna? Didn’t Livia kill Emperor Augustus with that stuff? Why, yes. Yes, she did.
(Apropos of nothing at all, don’t you just love Wikipedia?)
We’re giving this stuff to our baby? It’s “all-natural” so it’s gotta be good, right? Of course leeches, botulinum toxin, and rattle snake venom are all-natural too, but I don’t expect to find them in remedies from the baby isle at Walmart.
Okay, so, despite evidence to the contrary, I have not lost my mind or any sense of proportion here. A little Belladonna is in fact helping Evie—as well as my long-suffering wife—sleep, with no ill effects.
That said, I think the folks at Hyland’s Baby Products did well to go with Belladonna instead of Deadly Nightshade on the ingredients panel.
Now, if we could only get Evie to develop an immunity to Iocane Powder…
