Prevent Diaper Rash

And now for something completely different...

This one doesn't even fit in with my blog. Well, sort of does. It helps people. It is a green idea. But I didn't do any research for this. My kids have long grown out of diapers, but I am writing this for you, if you're here from a Google search, because I don't think my method is common knowledge, and if I can save just one baby from getting diaper rash, then all the hours I've spent on this blog over the years are worth it.

Forget diaper rash creams, diaper wipes, vaseline, whatever. Here is how to prevent diaper rash.

1. If your baby has peed: Remove diaper. Put on new diaper. That's it. You're done. Put the baby down.
2. If your baby has pooed: Remove diaper. Rinse your baby's bum under the tap with warm water. DO NOT USE SOAP. Pat dry with clean cloth. I use small cloths I bought in bulk from Walmart (see the picture above). Put on new diaper.
3. When your baby has a bath, then you are free to use whatever baby soap you normally use.
4. Learn the signs of when they're having a poop: child concentrating or whatever your child does, so you can change their diaper right away after a poo.

How did I come up with this?

My eldest had diaper rash. Once. We were on vacation and my parents-in-law were watching her. They did not notice she had pooped. When I am taking care of her, I notice right away. In fact, I could always tell exactly when she was pooping. She would look like she was concentrating and pause whatever she was doing. And then the smell. But it seems grandparents have no sense of smell, nor do they notice anything.

So she must have been in her dirty diaper for some time when I discovered it. That was when she got her one and only case of diaper rash. What a nightmare it was... she would scream every time we tried to clean her behind. Can you imagine putting water on an open sore? I would cry every time I had to change her diaper when she had the rash. It didn't last long. I had her with no diaper on until it healed.

My second child never had diaper rash. Never.

What I did differently with the second is that I did not rinse her bum off when she peed, only when she pooed. And I also did not use soap, except when bathing her. I did not use diaper creams, Vaseline, or whatever. The idea behind this is to toughen up her skin naturally. It worked so well that she never once had diaper rash, saving me from buying expensive creams, diaper wipes, and tears.

Please don't use diaper wipes. Environmentally unfriendly, and not kind to baby's bottom. Use them only when you know you will not have access to a tap with warm water. Having two children, I bought a total of two boxes of wipes, and only finished one of them.

Does it matter what kind of diapers you use? I experimented with cloth diapers, but most of the time I used disposables. I used Huggies for daytime and Pampers for nighttime, since the Huggies caught poo better, and the Pampers absorbed better at night.

For that matter, we used the bare minimum for diapers too. I toilet trained them at the ages of 22 and 25 months. It only took 3 days for them to learn, using my method, modified from the extensive research I did. And they night trained themselves. But that'll be another blog post, depending on the response for this one.