Recently, I decided to do a milk bath with the kids. They hadn’t been sleeping well, which meant Trey and I weren’t sleeping well, and basically the entire family was a bit grumpy early this week. It was bath night and I didn’t want to wait until after dinner because I knew they’d be losing it by then. If you know, you know. I decided that I needed to think of something fun to do with them that would be a good distraction from the norm.
Enter: milk bath. I’ve been wanting to give them one for a while and they jumped on the idea as soon as I mentioned it. Milk baths can be very relaxing, detoxifying, and downright “neat” for kids – I told them they were like cereal in there! We picked up some cheap grocery store flowers in the morning, and we were basically set to go!
You can use real milk, but I would recommend using milk powder, specifically whole milk powder (I’ve linked it here). If you were to use real milk, you’d probably want about 4L of homo milk which, to me, feels like a waste. Your call!
Most “recipes” call for 1 cup of powdered milk to mix into the warm bath water, but since we have a really huge freestanding tub I probably used about 2 cups. You can also add a few drops of essential oils if you like, but we felt like the scent of the milk was calming on its own. Keep in mind if you do add essential oils, make sure you are using one that is safe to use topically.
I added about a 1/3 cup of epsom salts which are high in magnesium and can help with muscle soreness. Cornstarch apparently can soothe skin irritations and help detangle hair if you want to add a bit of that as well. I don’t want to have to say this, but I am not a doctor, so use your discretion before dunking your kids into a mysterious bath!
Cut a few flowers from their stems and add them in JUST before you add the kids in!
My kids loved this! They played with the flowers, loved that their feet disappeared beneath the milk, and wanted to stay in forever and ever. The two downsides were: 1) their hair wasn’t exactly clean afterwards and 2) the soggy flowers left in the bottom of the tub weren’t the most fun to clean out. The adorable photos and the amount of entertainment we got out of it made it worthwhile and I’d totally do it again.
Let me know if you try and and what you think of it!
