Your Vernix Covered baby has such smooth skin!!

May 7, 2003 4:47 AM

Babies teach chemists the secret of soft skin. The Globe and mail reports the secret to the amazing soft skin of babies is the goo that surrounded them in utero. "One of the secrets to babies' smooth, soft skin is the greasy-looking white substance that covers them in the womb, scientists have discovered." Now we just need to find a way to bottle it... My elbows are chafed!
posted by phylum sinter (10 comments total)

Don't lick the baby.
posted by Space Coyote at 5:46 AM on May 7, 2003

from the article:

Dr. Visscher and her team have been doing research on vernix for nine years. Nurse practitioners collect the vernix from newborns with a plastic spoon. The average baby yields a heaping spoonful of vernix.

I guess that's how you bottle it :) However, the next sentence explains that it probably isn't safe (and definately isn't appealing) to use baby vernix on yourself.
posted by lowlife at 5:58 AM on May 7, 2003

EW! I should not have read that while eating my breakfast of cottage cheese with strawberries!!!
posted by PigAlien at 6:45 AM on May 7, 2003

Maybe one day baby oil will be made from babies.
posted by techgnollogic at 6:52 AM on May 7, 2003

Old Stephen Wright bit:

"Olive oil, peanut oil, vegetable oil, baby oil.....you tell me where it comes from."
posted by briank at 6:53 AM on May 7, 2003

You can already get moisturizer with human placental extract.

But its effectiveness may be a myth.
posted by iscatter at 7:18 AM on May 7, 2003

Vernix? Don't you mean the Vernix Reloaded?

Unsafe and unpractical as it may be, my dad told years ago me that nurses he worked with (he lives in Bolivia) would shamelessly scrape vernix off newborns to apply to their own skin.
posted by O9scar at 7:47 AM on May 7, 2003

Although it can probably be inferred from my post above, I should state that my dad is in fact a pediatrician/neonatologist.
posted by O9scar at 7:50 AM on May 7, 2003

It must be true, because in the week after my daughter was born, she sure got peel-y without her vernixy coating. Yeccch.
posted by padraigin at 8:44 AM on May 7, 2003

You should always wet your hands before handling them so as not to remove their protective coating. Afterwards, they can be safely returned to the water. Wait... that's trout.
posted by Witty at 9:23 AM on May 7, 2003