Mosquito Bites

Mosquitoes used to eat me alive. And I was allergic to them so they would swell huge, get a fever, and hurt for days. If a mosquito bit my forehead my eye would swell shut. And… I love tropical vacations. The only bad thing is that there are tons of mosquitoes.

We left from our wedding, straight to the airport, and overnighted to Tahiti. When we landed in Tahiti, we thought we were going to jump on a flight over to Moorea, only to discover they had updated our itinerary… and our flight wouldn’t leave for 8 hours. We were exhausted, and I still had tons of hairspray in my hair, and tons of makeup… so we decided to take a bus to the boat shuttle,

then another bus shuttle to get to our hotel earlier. When we got to the hotel, our room wasn’t ready….

But… they offered shower rooms in the lobby and said we could use those. So, we took our bags in, turned on the hot water, got undressed… and waited…. and waited… and waited. After 5 minutes of cold water, Ryan got dressed and went back out to the lobby to ask for help. One of the workers came in and felt the water and said it should have been hot by now. 🙁

So they had a wing of the hotel that was under construction, so they weren’t putting guests there, but one of the rooms was actually ready to go, so they said we could use the room until our Garden Bungalow was ready.

I’m sure you know what we did next… booked a massage for a couple hours later, took a shower, and took a nap.

After our massages we got to move into our Garden Bungalow and decided to take the hotel shuttle to a restaurant on the water for dinner. After we unpacked everything, we realized that the 2 containers of Off Spray I went out to buy on the morning of my wedding were nowhere to be found. But… we were just going out to dinner, so no big D.

Until they sat us at our table on the lagoon with long white tablecloths and gave us our menus and went to get us some glasses of water. I was trying to look at the menu when my legs started burning… and itching. I couldn’t figure out why. But… being close to the water, and wearing a dress, and having a long tablecloth meant that mosquitoes were able to get to my legs without me even realizing it. I got bit on both legs for a total of, I think it was… 18 bites. So, I said we needed to leave. The hotel shuttle had just left to go back, so we had to wait for him to return to pick us up and drop us off at the grocery store. Of course, everything was in French, so we ended up picking this up… it looked right. Then we walked back to the hotel. On our way back, we met a very sweet lady who said we could use lemon on the bites, and she showed us where her little Pearl Shack was that she owned, and said her son owned the ATV shop next store and he takes people on tours of the island.

So, back at our room, we ordered room service that came with… Lemon, and my hubby put lemon on my bites. It didn’t make the allergic reaction any less severe, I still had to spend the entire honeymoon with huge welts, with fever, and looking bruised and feeling super heavy.

That’s what I had to deal with… for years and years and years. I had no idea that my bodies reaction to bites could or would ever change… until I learned about gut health and started researching more natural options. Oh my goodness, you definitely need to learn about this stuff, it’s so crazy how so much of your health is tied to your gut! And I didn’t even learn about gut health until I was diagnosed with Cold urticaria, an allergy to the cold, yes, it’s a real thing. I thought it was something fake that the girl on The Bachelor made up to try to get more attention from the bachelor. But it was only a few months later that I learned it was real, and I had it, and they wanted to try to mask my symptoms by putting me on Lupus medication, even though I don’t have Lupus.

Anyway, that’s what got me started on this more natural path. My skin no longer has crazy reactions to the cold, my bites are much fewer (did you know the mosquitoes are actually attracted to the bacteria on your skin??? I thought it was my blood type, but when I would meet fellow mosquito attractive people they never shared my blood type), and when I do get bit, I say it looks like a normal person’s mosquito bite. In the last couple weeks I’ve been getting bitten again, and if you are like me, it drives me crazy when it’s time for bed and all I can think about is how itchy that bite is. This mama needs sleep, I work 30 hours a week from home as a data analyst and I also watch my almost 2 year old, and almost 4 year old, and have to pick up my almost 6 year old from the bus stop every day. I sleep like a log, now, and wake up super rested and ready to start my day, but… nobody likes to be woken up to itchy skin.

So… of course I went to google to find natural remedies for mosquito bites and one listed, that I know I have a bottle of was peppermint oil. I am not an oily mama, so I don’t know all the correct terms, but I put some oil straight onto the bite, rubbed it in and was good until morning!

So, if you have bites and have essential oils on hand, try it out. And if you don’t have peppermint alone, do what I do, and find one that has it as an ingredient. It can’t hurt to try it.

Also, if you plan to go to Tahiti, learn some of the language before you go, it’s so cool to see people light up when they know you can speak a little of their language.

https://www.tripsavvy.com/common-tahitian-words-and-phrases-1532902