Mom says she lets her infant eat wood, rocks, and dirt: 'I trust nature and my baby'

A 22-year-old mom on TikTok is raising serious concerns for her one-year-old son's wellbeing after a video of her explaining that she lets him eat sand and rocks to boost his immune system, went viral across social media platforms. While the video was originally uploaded to the platform in April, it became a controversial topic this week after YouTubers Mr Beard and nickisnotgreen made a video about @comingupfern's unconventional parenting techniques. Titled "This Woman's Going to Kill Her Baby," the video discussed the various dangers of the TikToker's "crunchy mom" lifestyle and left netizens who believe in medical science stunned.

In the controversial video, @comingupfern — who describes herself as a "vegan free birth VBAC mama," explained why she intentionally allows — and even encourages — her infant to eat anything and everything he gets his hands on; as long as it qualifies as vegan, of course. "Why I let my exclusively breastfed baby eat sticks, rock, sand, dirt, and unsanitized shopping carts," her voiceover says in the 25-seconds-long clip. "In the last couple hundred years, the allopathic industry has taken the world by storm. This did not happen by accident. It happened after a series of billion-dollar campaigns intended to shift the public’s perception on health."

"I do not fear bacteria," she continues, as appropriately ominous music plays in the background. "In fact, I welcome it. I trust nature and my baby. It is not a coincidence babies have this instinct while they are breastfeeding." The video features a series of clips of a baby sucking on sandy fingers, rocks, and a wood chip his mother handed him. While the comments on the viral post have been turned off, netizens had a lot of say in response to Mr Beard's YouTube video calling out @comingupfern's parenting methods.

"What I think [is] that all these antimedicine-prostupid people are way too privileged. They have never seen a kid with polio, they have never seen a real parasitic infection (like the ones where you have worms crawling out of your nose), they have never seen meningitis, they have never seen real rashes, dehydration, poisoning, hunger, malnutrition, etc. They'd lived in a bubble of health and money all their life so they just assume that 'diseases' do not exist, and have never seen how horrible the rabbit hole can go. I live in a 3rd world country and I have seen diseases and I would never EVER give my child a 1% chance of getting any of these infections. Really some people do not deserve to be parents," commented Fer Garza.

"I'm so happy someone's talking about this woman, I'm genuinely worried for her baby," wrote another commenter. "It's true that kids that spend time outdoors tend to have a better immune system, but there's a difference between getting fresh sun and air and getting cholera," chimed in yet another. In his video, Mr Beard also takes a look at some other videos shared by @comingupfern, which reveal that she's an anti-vaxxer (no surprise there) and believes antibiotics are "baby poison."

"The scariest thing about this is that she's not going to let her child have antibiotics," he says in the video. "So if while Fern is in the river, fu**ing sucking on rocks, and he gets an infection, she is not going to give him any antibiotics to help cure that infection... I can respect some people having different perspectives and beliefs but when you're to the point where you're just letting your baby eat like, wood chips, which are going to pierce his intestines, and not giving him antibiotics to save his life, at that point, I feel like there needs to be some intervention, you know?"