Sleeping Beauty, Not So Much

I lucked out on my first trimester...things were going great, I never got sick, never felt bloated, I ate gummy worms by the bagful.

Ok, I'll stop.

The one thing I did notice was that my skin broke out like a 12 year old.

I'm not sure if I can blame my hormones or the fact that I was falling asleep face down on my couch every night at 7:30 pm. But for whatever reason, things got YM in my house superfast.

The main problem was that, being a good little science nerd, I happen to read all the advice about steering clear of most acne and other skincare acid products during pregnancy.

Overkill?

Over abundance of caution?

Totally ridiculous considering the gummy worms and coffee I continued to ingest?

Yup, yup, and yup.

Did it make me feel a little better about the coffee/corn syrup fiesta?

You betcha.

But I wasn't capable of giving up beauty products entirely, especially when I had a Level 5 breakout on my hands. So when I put out a query to the Twitter-verse about face scrubs and Belle over at Capitol Hill Style recommended Ole Henriksen's New Beginning Scrub and said it was all natural...I decided to check it out.

Besides, Swedish things are so hot right now.

Not willing to pony up for the whole jar just yet, I got a sample and really liked it. The texture is a little honey-like, with a mild and pleasant smell. The best thing was the fact that the scrubbing beads are made from jojoba wax as opposed to salt or sugar or apricot kernels. This made the scrub far more gentle than other scrubs I've tried, something I really prefer.

Eventually, my skin cleared up. Again, who knows if we can chalk it up to the scrub or the fact that I was actually washing my face at night, but I like to think it's the scrub. It's either that or the fact that I finally stopped eating gummy worms after totally OD-ing on them one afternoon at work.

You know, whatever.

photo courtesy of sephora.com