I Learned This Genius Odor-Busting Trick from a Nurse, and It Instantly Made My Room Smell Fresh

Giving birth at a hospital is not exactly the coziest experience. Beyond the intense pain, the harsh lighting, and the beep-beep-beeping of the hospital equipment keeping track of you and your baby’s vitals, there is the familiar and discomforting smell of a hospital. All of this adds up to a decidedly uncozy environment. However, there are a few tactics that birth classes and doulas recommend for implementing a softer atmosphere in a sterile hospital room. One of them that piqued my interest in particular was filling the room with a good and calming scent. 

Before I had my first baby in 2019, I took a birthing class with a handful of other nervous soon-to-be-parents. Though, yes, I was there to learn how to bathe the baby and how to feed her, I was mostly interested in tips on how to stay calm during an unmedicated birth. Unfortunately, many of the tricks you read about online conflict with what was actually allowed in my hospital (candles, being submerged in water, a completely dark room). 

“You can’t have candles,” I vividly remember the nurse saying during the birthing class, which, of course, makes perfect safety sense. “What I recommend is dabbing a few drops of essential oils onto a cotton ball.” The idea is that when you start to tense up and the contraction pain is at its peak, you can grab your cotton ball and take a deep breath with it underneath your nose. A huge bonus is that it also can disguise any lingering food scents wafting in from the nurse’s lounge when you’re ravenously hungry and can’t eat until your bundle of joy arrives. 

Willing to try anything, I put the cotton ball to the test to see if it could keep me calm and make the hospital room smell better. 

After birthing two baby girls at two different hospitals, I can decidedly say that yes, dabbing essential oils onto cotton balls can make a marked difference in the way that a room smells and feels. In the days leading up to the births, I dipped five cotton balls in lavender essential oil and popped them in a plastic baggie, then took them out once I started laboring. 

To my surprise and delight, the nurse was right. The scents filled the room in the best way possible, keeping me calm and focused throughout my labor. In fact, the trick worked so well that I now implement it at home to diminish gross odors from trash and diapers. 

To use a cotton ball to make a room or stinky item in your home smell better:

• Soak a cotton ball in your chosen scent (mine is lavender, but lemon or rosemary could also be a great choice). 
  
• Stick it in the bottom of the diaper pail, the trash bin, a laundry chute, gym bag, etc. You could even use a clothespin to clip it to the blade of a ceiling fan and turn it on low, letting the scent waft around the room. 

I could also envision using an essential oil-soaked cotton ball in a place where lighting a candle isn’t practical, like a dorm room or an office building. 

Though of course it depends on how heavily you soak your cotton ball, in my experience the essential oil scent is really powerful for a couple of days and then starts to taper off. However, if your nostrils have ever been stung by the overwhelming force of emptying out a diaper pail, you’ll be pleased at how this can make even a little bit of difference. (What can I say? Baby poop is going to smell no matter what clever tricks you have up your sleeve.)