Clove Oil - Babies, 6-year olds and Fighting Illness

I remember when the world "clove" reminded me only of making pomanders in school by pushing clove buds into oranges around the holidays (maybe that's why I love my wild orange and clove sugar scrub!). My, how things have changed!

Now when I think of cloves, I think of OnGuard, dōTERRA's protective blend (more on that later), which is in the cleaner concentrate we use, my toothpaste, and even drops I such on when my throat needs soothing. The other thing that comes to mind is the relief of dental-related discomfort. Yep - think of drooling, teething, unhappy little babies and toddlers. Clove oil works for them, too!!

I still remember the day that my clove oil arrived. I cracked that bottle open and threw a drop into a roller bottle of fractionated coconut oil before you could say "apple pie!" We roll that heavily diluted clove oil on the teething todder's jawline and even put some on a finger tip and swipe his swollen gums! It brings him nearly instant relief and is so effective that he willingly accepts it whenever it's offered.

Yep, we were pretty smug about our parenting of a teething miniature person because of how effective the clove oil was.

However, in the last week or so, we've noticed our oldest child (she's 6 and a half) shoving her hands in her mouth frequently .... again. We thought we waved goodbye to that bad habit when she was four, but here we are again! Then the hair chewing started .... yuck. Grabbing big chunks of her own hair and chewing on it, leaving her hair damp (and quite frankly, just gross!). It wasn't till I caught her chewing on her own fingers that I asked her what the heck was going on. That's when she said her mouth was sore and opened it wide to reveal a molar breaking through the gums. BAH! Of course! Six-year molars! So you can probably guess what happened next ... miss six-year-old earned herself her very own personal clove oil roller so that she could apply it a couple of times a day to keep the pain at bay. And with that, there was no more hand-in-mouth and no more hair-chewing. Hurray!!!

Clove oil obviously has analgesic effects, but it is also one of the most powerful essential oils for cleaning and avoiding illnesses because it's so mean to bacteria and other yucky things. It's the eugenol in it that makes it so powerful, and that's why it's a key ingredient in the OnGuard protective blend!

If you want to test it out for yourself, shoot me a message through the blog, Facebook, or through my dōTERRA page!