Pregnancy, Bugs, and the Dangers of Eucalyptus Oil

Hi, everyone! Abby here.

I’ll be doing most of the posting on our blog on a weekly basis. Writing was never Ryan’s favorite subject throughout grade school, so we’ll let him stick primarily to selling houses and managing an office for the time being!

Here are a few updates from yours truly.

This week was a doozy.

Yesterday evening, my lovely husband took our daughter, Brigid, to the ER. To preface this story, she is completely fine, but I thought I would share some information that we learned the hard way.

I am officially entering the third trimester of pregnancy, which somehow feels both exciting and slightly terrifying. This pregnancy has gone by incredibly fast, probably because our days are already filled with kids, animals, gardening, work, and everything else that comes with our slightly chaotic life.

As we get closer to welcoming another baby, the nesting instinct has really started kicking in. I have been rearranging the kids’ rooms, moving cribs, sorting clothes, organizing closets, and convincing myself that every room in the house suddenly needs to be completely redone before the baby arrives.

Unfortunately, during one of those projects, our little girl got into a bottle of eucalyptus oil.

At first, I did not think much of it. I told her to set it down and continued moving things around. A little over a minute later, I looked back and saw the cap off the four-ounce bottle. She was coughing while holding the dropper in her other hand.

She told me she had “eaten some.”

I immediately jumped online and discovered that eucalyptus oil can be highly toxic if swallowed and that Poison Control should be contacted right away. Because Ryan and I had no idea how much she may have consumed, we decided the safest course of action was to take her to the emergency room.

She was observed for four hours, and thanks be to the Lord, she was completely fine. We were finally released around 10:00 that night.

What we thought would be a quiet evening at home quickly turned into several hours of fear, worry, and mental turmoil. We are incredibly grateful that the situation was not more serious and that our girl was okay.

So, learn from us, folks: eucalyptus oil is highly toxic when ingested. From now on, I will be treating all of my essential oils exactly like the medications in our medicine cabinet, locked up and completely out of reach.

Lesson definitely learned.

On a slightly less dramatic note, I recently discovered that my garden has become completely overrun with pests, thanks to the lovely hot and humid weather we have been experiencing.

Now, I head outside with Ryan in the early mornings before the kids wake up to do farm chores and torch the cucumber and squash beetles in my garden.

Yes, you read that correctly.

While Ryan feeds the cattle, I walk around with a butane torch lighter, making it my personal mission to take care of every beetle I see. It sounds gruesome, and honestly, it is a little disgusting, but it is surprisingly effective.

Last year, I planted 12 squash plants and harvested exactly two squashes because of these pesky little bugs. Apparently, you cannot always let Mother Nature run her course when it comes to organic gardening. Sometimes, you have to step in and handle things yourself.

For anyone who may not know, Ryan and I keep a preservation garden on our little homestead. We make it our goal to live off as much food as we can grow and raise ourselves throughout the year. That includes vegetables from the garden, chickens, beef, and even a pig from my brother, which I still say counts!

It may sound like a tremendous amount of work, and sometimes it certainly is, but it truly brings us peace. There is something incredibly fulfilling about feeding our family in the middle of winter with food that we grew ourselves, or at least knowing exactly where it came from.

This season of life feels especially meaningful as we prepare to welcome another baby into our family. Pregnancy has a way of making me slow down, look around, and appreciate the home and life we are building together, even when that life includes late-night ER visits, garden beetles, unfinished nursery projects, hungry cattle, and a husband who would rather sell a house than write a blog post.

Our six-acre property is not perfect, but it has given us room to grow food, raise animals, nurture our hobbies, and raise our family in a way that feels true to us.

That is what home should be.

It is more than the place where you lay your head at night. It is the backdrop for your family’s memories, the space where your interests can take root, and the place where your preferred way of life can grow alongside you.

Whether your dream is a small homestead, a garden in the backyard, a quiet neighborhood, a workshop, or simply enough bedrooms for a growing family, the right home should support the life you hope to build, not just the life you are living today.

And sometimes, it should also have a very high cabinet for the eucalyptus oil.