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I have been using MotherEase OS since my daughter was 1 month old. About five months ago (a couple of months after she turned 2), she developed a reoccurring diaper rash. It has been so bad that welts have developed in her nether region. I am still using the cloth diapers with both her and her baby brother (who is almost seven months old). Has anyone else experienced this? I am wondering if, because I am using the same diapers with her and her brother, she is reacting to his feces.
Initially, the rash was like a few pimples, but it has since spread to her bum area, and there is hardly any lag between the sores drying up and new ones forming. She sometimes bleeds when I have to clean her up. I give her air time. We are trying to potty train. It seems the feces are causing the most reaction. The doctors are stumped and recommend using disposables for the next little while (for absorbancy reasons).
Suggestions? |
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Is the dr. sure it is not yeast or bacteria related? I've never dealt with a yeast rash but the pimple-type sores you describe sound like yeast ... someone correct me if I am wrong!
You may wish to see if the diapers have detergent buildup, which she could be reacting to. Just wash on hot (no detergent) and, during the hot cycle, check to see if there are bubbles ... just a few bubbles isn't going to be a big problem ... you will know.
Also, you may wish to try separating your stash for a week or so between your son and your daughter and not using the same diaper for a few wash cycles ... see if it makes a difference.
You could also try a different detergent if those things don't work. My daughter's allergist suggested Dreft and, with very small amounts, we have no problem with buildup.
Has she been adding any new foods to her diet that could be causing her problems ... food allergies can cause diaper rashes...
Sorry this is so long ... hopefully it offers some helpful ideas. I hope your little one is all healed up soon!! |
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I feel for you, my twin dds have had a similar sounding reocurring rash for the last 2-3 years!! Small to medium welts/pimples filled with a clear liquid that burst and then turn into scabs. Almost never accompanied by general redness or irration, which is even weirder to me. Just horrible welts/pimples and all the skin around them is perfectly healthy. Sometimes it's just a few tiny pimples, other times it's been dime size welts. A couple of times it looked like the girls had scratched themselves and the scratches had become infected. But not always. Very mysterious...
I did find that disposables cleared the rash up (and I confess to sometimes resorting to disposables to help heal a particularly bad flare up) but it's not necessary if I'm diligent about how I wash my diapers. I tried all the yeast remedies imaginable and none made a difference. Only thing I can figure out is that they react to both the slightest trace of bacteria *and* detergent build-up. I've never seen children react this badly to stuff that most other kids' skin would never even notice. And they weren't like this till they were about 18 months and they otherwise don't have super sensitive skin (no eczema, no dermatitis, no reactions to soaps, lotions or shampoos, nothing like that at all). It still has me a little stumped but I've got it mostly under control now. Flare ups are rare and when they happen I don't usually have to resort to disposables anymore. And daytime diapers were never a problem, only nighttime. If I used disposables at night, they never ever reacted to daytime cloth.
If I used detergent, they would flare up unless I put the diapers through 2-3 hot cycles after the regular wash. There was no way I was doing that on a regular basis though. I could perhaps have kept searching for another detergent that worked, maybe one of those low residue ones like Charlies or Country Save but I just didn't feel like buying a whole bunch of different detergents to try out, especially since most of them aren't easily available around here.
I also found that using a little bleach prevented the rash, but again I wasn't willing to do this on a regular basis. Had I not found my present solution I was going to experiment with using decreasing amounts of bleach and alternating some loads with and some without. I figured that would minimize the environmental harm as well as any damage to my diapers (whenever I experimented with bleach I always did it with my old cotton diapers, never with my newer bamboo). If necessary I would have done that. Although I don't generally believe in using bleach anywhere, I do believe that a little bleach is better than resorting to disposables all the time.
What's been working fairly well for us now has been a combination of soap nuts and a bit of washing soda. The soap nuts are build-up free and I think the washing soda helps give the diapers a bit of a deeper clean. I also always wash my diapers on a sanitary cycle and often put them through an additional hot cycle with no detergent. I was experimenting with using just a warm cycle afterwards and one of them just got a flare up a couple weeks ago... This may not be necessary if I had a top loader though. I don't think this is necessary in the vast majority of cases, but for us and my oddly sensitive daughters, it's the only reasonable thing that works.
HTH,
Karen. |
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My daughter also had a rash that looked like little pimples/blisters that would burst. They didn't really reoccur that often, but I did take her to the doctor, who said it was probably related to bacteria and gave us some prescription cream. I used disposables while I used the cream, and once the rash was gone I washed my diapers in the hottest water my water heater could make with about 20 drops of tea tree oil. People on this forum said the tea tree oil would help kill the bacteria.
It hasn't been that long (just over a month) but the spots haven't come back. Maybe try some tea tree oil? |
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Thanks for the advice. The dr prescribed antibiotics and antifungal cream to use in conjunction with extra strength barrier cream. We have already tried Fucidin, which seemed to work about four months ago, but the walkin clinic dr presribed Fucidin with hydrocortisone, which didn't work as well. Then we were prescribed the triple cream Jack Newman uses for nipples that are infected, but that didn't work. Finally, we are back to Fucidin ointment and this new antifungal. The pharmacist is getting to know us well!
I haven't stripped my diapers in a while, so that is worth a try. I found that my son was reacting to the vinegar rinse, which is odd because it is supposed to prevent diaper rash.
Karen, what is your washing routine. I have been kicking around the idea of using soap nuts, but just haven't gotten around to it. I use the Presidents Choice Green Cold water detergent, just a bit of it. I have been using this for about a year. Before that, I was using Arm and Hammer Nature. |
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I start with just a cold pre-rinse, nothing added. While that's happening I soak 2 soap nuts in hot water (mostly because my soap nut bag would always open in the wash but also because I'd heard that for some FL users there wasn't enough water to properly 'activate' the soap nuts - someday I'll make a liquid and use that...). Once the rinse is done I pour the soap nut water on top of the diapers, remove the nuts from the bag and throw the bag in with the diapers (I figure there's lots of the saponin - that's the soap nut 'soap' - on the bag but I don't want to leave the nuts in there because my bag just opens up and makes a mess of the nuts - I really should just use a knotted sock but I don't really mind). I then put about 1/2 a tablespoon of washing soda in the dispenser and run a sanitize cycle (I run the hot water in my laundry sink to make sure the machine gets only hot water). After the sanitize cycle I run another normal hot cycle. I don't normally bother with extra rinses since I figure the diapers are already getting two extra rinses in that additional hot cycle. Sometimes I'll add extra water somewhere in there by filling an old detergent bottle with hot water and pouring that straight into the detergent dispense. Then I put them in the dryer on medium.
Keep in mind that at this point I'm only washing 6-8 bedwetter pants because my girls are dry during the day so only need something at night. If I were washing a full load of diapers I'd probably use 3-4 soap nuts and 1-2 tablespoons of washing soda.
I admit to being a really bad mommy and never actually seeing a doctor about this. We don't have a family doc which would have meant getting the girls up at 6am to line up outside for 1.5 hours at the one drop-in clinic we could go to, then wait for 2-5 hours in the waiting room. All this with twin toddlers!!!! Besides I figured I would just be told that it was that cloth was 'bad' for skin and told to use disposables. I did call a governement health info line and the nurse didn't have much input beyond adding bleach to my wash or using disposables.
I researched online a lot and used every reasonable natural remedy I could find. I tried tea tree oil (in the wash, in wipes solution, even in the bath with them), boiling the diapers, stripping them, more detergent, less detergent, homemade recipe of washing soda and Simple Green, over-the-counter yeast medication, over-the-counter anti-bacterial creams, barrier creams, fleece liners, no fleece liners etc etc etc. I even went so far as smoothering their bums in minced garlic when a naturopath friend told me it was one of the best anti-fungal, anti-bacterials known to man. I even considered ordering some colloidal silver because I read it was also one of the best anti-bacterials, anti-fungals and antibiotics. Even brand new diapers still ended up causing up problems (and I made sure the girls were all healed before using them, and even treated their skin as much as I could to make sure they wouldn't cross-contaminate the diapers). Made no difference.
When it was at it's worst the diapers would have a heavy ammonia smell in the morning (which is totally gone now even though the diapers are used only for nighttime by often heavy wetting preschoolers). But we've had small flare ups even when there was no ammonia at all.
In the end all that's worked to make sure the rashes didn't come back was detergent with super mega hot water rinsing afterwards, bleach and now this routine.
Honestly, I hate to admit it but I really think the problem was in the diapers (for us anyway). It kills me to admit that but after everything I've tried I really think it's true. I think it's extremely rare but for us I think it's true. In all my years on diapering boards and my own experience with my other children and children of a handful of cloth diapering friends I've never heard of a case like this, but then again most would probably have given up on cloth long before going through all this. But for my girls it seems the diapers need to be deeply cleaned and totally residue-free or they react violently.
I don't normally recomend this but I would use disposables for now (at least at night) to let things heal nicely and lessen your stress a little. You'll also be able to use whatever creams your doc wants you to use with no fear of creating a build-up in the diapers or staining them. In the meantime, strip your diapers and then when everything is healed up try the diapers again. Hopefully that'll be that and you'll never have to deal with it again.
And by the way, vinegar does cause some kids to break out. Vinegar is the kind of thing that either solves problems or creates them depending on the child and probably a million other circumstances.
Sorry for the novel but I hope you can benefit from my experience. Then again, I hope that my experience is so unique that it applies to absolutly no one else! LOL!
Karen. |
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| Fairly sure my daughter was getting a rash from the vinegar I used to put in the rinse. She had a rash with red bumps that we had to get prescriptions for a couple times, but she never had it once I stopped the vinegar. I found that it was even giving me the itchies when I would soak her bath toys in vinegar to remove the mildew. I still wonder if that's what wrecked my bamboo, I hate vinegar now! |
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