After your new baby has been wearing nappies for a while, regardless of whether you are using disposable diapers or cloth diapers, your happy baby may start to develop skin allergy and the diaper area may look irritated and red. Chances are your baby has the typical baby rashes. Rashes in children can alarm new parents and definitely make your cute babies highly irritable. But do not be alarm. Dealing with nappy rash is just part of your parenting journey.
Diaper rash is a resultant of inflamed skin. The new babies may have patches of redness on the tender-looking skin at the buttock, and may have some slight swelling. Such skin allergies could be mild with just a few red dots to severe diaper rash with large patches of redness that may spread to the baby thighs, baby genitals and baby tummy.
What Causes Diaper Rash / Nappy Rash?
However, rashes on babies does not imply that there is bad parenting. As diaper rash is resulting from a combination of factors such as baby skin sensitivity. And to make you feel better, it can happen to anyone wearing diapers for prolonged periods, including adults!
Newborn diaper rash could be traced to a couple of possibilities, namely:
- Irritation can result from baby sensitive skin having prolonged exposure to urine or stool can irritate a baby’s sensitive skin. And even the most absorbent nappy will have some moisture on the new baby skin. The combination will see the formation of ammonia which can be very harsh on your baby skin. Therefore, as a new parent, you may noticed that bad diaper rash tends to occur more often when your new baby is having diarrhea.
- Disposable nappies and cloth nappies can sometimes result in it constantly rubbing against the baby skin that can lead to a baby nappy rash. This can also happen when new parent wipes the baby buttocks too often or uses products that have chemicals like fragrance and alcohol that triggers skin sensitivity.
- Irritation of the baby skin can also be due to sensitive skin reaction to new products, such as new brand of baby diapers, wet baby wipes, baby lotions, baby oils, baby powder, washing detergent, bleach, and fabric softener, etc.
- As babies start eating solid foods or are introduced to a new food, it is common that bad nappy rash can occur. This is because the food intake changes the composition of the baby stool, and may also increase the frequency that the baby pass out stools. If you are breastfeeding your baby, what the mother eats may also cause reactions in the baby that can cause baby rash.
- As the diaper area is always warm and moist, it thus encourages bacteria and yeast to manifest itself that makes it vulnerable and could give rise to nappy rash, especially in the skin folds of the baby. And what begins as a simple skin allergy may soon spread to surrounding parts of the baby.
- Antibiotics kill bacteria — the good and the bad. Babies on antibiotics, as well as breastfeeding mothers on antibiotics, may thus create an environment that yeast infections tend to flourish as the “good” bacteria that are meant to keep the “bad” bacteria growth in check are removed by the antibiotics. In addition, antibiotics taken by the baby or the breastfeeding mother, can increase the frequency of passing stools that inherently increases the chances of the baby developing nappy rash.
How to Treat a Rash?
Baby rash usually recovers with some simple home remedies for diaper rash within three to four days without a visit to the doctor. Keeping your baby’s skin as clean and dry as possible is the best skin rash treatment to tackling nappy rash, including considering not putting on the diaper for your baby for a short period of time each day if your environment can permit that, or putting a baby mat below for easier cleaning later on. You may also want to consider switching to a different brand of baby diapers. Thus, more frequent diaper changes, use of correct ointment, watch the mother and baby diets, and the kind of products used to clean the baby and the other items. For yeast infection, doctors may recommend over-the-counter prescription of diaper rash cream or antifungal cream.
It is important for new parents to know that using creams or ointments containing steroids should only be done on recommendation from your baby’s pediatrician or dermatologist, as inappropriate use can lead to other side effects.
However, if you noticed diaper rash blisters or open sores, there is likely a skin infection. In this instance, you may want to bring your baby to consult a doctor as a prescription of antibiotics may be necessary for your child. Likewise, if your baby develops a fever or the baby’s nappy rash does not recover after several days of home remedies treatment, it is best to consult a doctor.
Preventive Measures
As the saying goes, prevention is better than cure. Therefore, listed below are some of the preventive measures that new parents can undertake to minimize the possibility of severe nappy rash:
- Keep your baby’s diaper area clean and dry is by changing diapers more frequently. Many a times, this may mean that the parent may have to sacrifice sleep during the night to change the diaper.
- Gently pat-to-clean and dry the baby skin after every diaper change. Do not rub your baby’s skin. Also do ensure that the water is lukewarm and not too hot for the baby skin.
- Use alcohol-free and fragrance-free baby wipes to clean your baby.
- Apply a suitable diaper rash cream or diaper rash ointment to protect the baby’s skin during every diaper change. Examples could be products with zinc oxide cream and petroleum jelly ointment.
- Use a fitting diaper to ensure that the baby’s skin is getting better air circulation. Remember not to secure the diaper too tightly.
- Use appropriate detergents, bleach and fabric softeners for washing the baby’s clothing, especially cloth diapers. Skip the fabric softener if you can and double wash the cloth diapers to ensure there is no residual detergent on the cloth diapers. Keep tab on what you used so that should skin allergies start, you can better narrow down the affecting product.
- Introduce solid food one new food item at a time for several days to monitor for abnormal reactions in the baby, before moving on to others.
- Breastfeeding strengthens your baby’s resistance to infections and hence is strongly encouraged. However, the mother and child is strongly related and hence the mother needs to watch her diet closely.