Wednesday 28 December 2011

Helpful Hints for Your Baby Skin Care Routine

You need to do more than give your baby a bath if you want to practise proper baby skin care.  Keeping your child’s skin healthy and clean means caring for every inch of him/her. 


Laundry, sun exposure and erupting skin conditions are all things that you need to stay on top of. It is important to remember that a baby’s skin is way more sensitive than an adult’s skin. Your baby needs your watchful eyes and care to make sure that skin conditions are stopped before they start. The good news is that caring for your baby’s skin is not very complex. You should be able to put together a quality routine early on in your baby’s life. 


 Here are a few hints to give you some help. Believe it or not, your newborn and young infant does not need to have a bath every night. Most young infants and newborns stay fairly clean. This is mostly because babies can’t get around on their own and depend on their parents to get them from place to place. This means that parents can keep an eye out for things that will get the baby dirty or that could harm the baby’s skin. A newborn pretty much only needs to be given a bath twice or three times a week as long as you keep the baby’s face clean. 


When babies learn to crawl and walk, however, you need to give them baths more frequent. When you buy your baby new clothes, bedding or toys make sure to wash them in hypoallergenic and gentle detergent before letting them come into contact with the baby’s skin. This wash cycle is important because it rids the items of things that might harm or irritate your son or daughter’s skin. 


Many adults do this all of their lives. Do you wash your new sheets, towels and clothes before you use them for the first time? Be careful around your baby’s umbilical cord stump. Rubbing it, pulling on it and playing with it are bad ideas. Swab the stump with rubbing alcohol a few times a day. Leave it alone the rest of the time. Fore go giving your infant a “real” bath until his or her umbilical cord stump falls off. Folding down the top edge of your baby’s diaper is the best way to keep the diaper from accidentally irritating the umbilical cord stump. The stump area is sensitive and is easy to infect which is why a high level of care is important.   Talk to your pediatricians about the best way to care for the stump and the spot it leaves behind after it falls off. 


The number one element of skin care is keeping it clean. There are a lot of products on the market that claims to do this or that but healthy skin for your baby isn’t a complicated matter. All of our grown-up skin products do not help a baby keep their luxurious skin. Don’t use your baby as a lab mouse with these products because they aren’t made for babies. All it takes is a little research and intuition to get the right routine going. Remember, there is no need to overcomplicated something that is not complicated to begin.