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My ds son (17 months) has been having open sores for about 2-3 weeks. We get them all cleared up and then they come back. They look so painful. He also have little nodgue like bumps around the diaper area. I know a lot of times when this topic is posted here and other places people respond with yeast, but I have looked at pictures on line of yeast and this looks nothing like that. His skin is normally colored (no red areas) except in where the open sores are. Today when I got him up the blisters were back in full force. He had 5 this morning. He has been pooping sporadically in his sleep lately which I think is a major factor in all of this. This probably happens less than once a week, but we have just gotten everything cleared up or well on the way to healing when he poops again and the sores come back. He is a great sleeper, sleeps 12 hours. I am even begining to debate if I should get him up in the middle of the night to change him. He only acts as though they are painful when I am trying to wipe him off when I am changing his diaper.
We have been putting eucerine on it - that is what the dr recommended abouta year ago because he said ds had sensitve skin. We also tried butt paste and the cordizone cream the dr perscribed for sensitive skin.
We have been giving him baking soda baths and letting him go in a diaper without a cover.
As far as washing our cloth diapers
We rinse, wash on hot with little free and clear soap and baking soda, and then rinse again. This is the way we have done it for all 17 months with no problems till now.
The time before the sores this morning - he had been really sick with snotty nose and a slight feaver. I do not know if they are related. He is perfectly health and happy this time - so I am guessing not.
Thanks for listening. |
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Dealing with rashes can be very frustrating--you aren't alone! I wish I had a perfect solution for you. I don't, but here are some thoughts.
1) When my boys had bad colds they would sometimes get rashy from poop contact. I never researched this, but figured it was probably due to the acidity of the extra mucus content going through the digestive system.
2) Once you get some "poop burns," it can take a while, and extra diligence to clear them up. My older son had some horrible ones after he ate a bunch of tomato sauce and then did a stealth poop. It probably took several weeks to clear up, since if I didn't catch a poop immediately, it was like starting over, even though the subsequent poops didn't have that high acid content. For him it was more like a burn that became sores, in clear spots where the poop had been in contact for too long, right by the start of his butt cheeks. Do you think the sores correlate to direct contact with poop?
3) If you are seeing a correlation between poops and the sores, chances are that's the connection, but beyond that, have you noticed any changes in your diapers? Anything out of the ordinary?
Although your son might truly be pooping in the middle of the night, if mine went after I put them to bed, it was generally shortly after/as falling asleep, or first thing in the morning, just as or before they were waking. Maybe that's not the case for you, but I hope maybe it is, as checking before you go to bed would be a lot easier than getting up at night! :-)
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Because of a spinal cord injury, I have to wear adult diapers at night for incontinence. I used to get rashes all the time, until a home health nurse gave us some samples of 2 different creams: Calmoseptine and Flander's Buttocks Ointment. These 2 creams are GREAT FOR RASHES!!!!
The Calmoseptine is wonderful if your baby has a rash that stings and burns a lot, because it has menthol in it to "cool" the rash and make it less painful. My caregivers use this on me when I have a painful and itchy diaper rash. It clears the rash up quickly and is also good for other uses like cuts/scrapes and hemerrhoid pain.
The Flanders Buttocks Ointment we use every night as a preventive measure. It helps reduce the redness of a rash and its also very easy to apply and remove (it also doesn't smell like medicine at all). We also noticed that it doesn't leave a build-up on the adult cloth diapers I use.
The only cream I don't recommend at all is that Desitin Maximum Relief cream. My sister used this on my neice and it did nothing to get rid of her bad diaper rash. |
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My twin girls have similar issues sometimes (sudden blisters with no other signs of rash, redness or irritation - the blisters themselves pop fairly quickly, form a small scab and finally leave a red mark that slowly goes away), we've been dealing with it since they were about the same age as your son (they're now almost 5 and still wearing a bedwetter pant at night).
I'll tell what I've figured out for us. Might not all apply to you but you can take whatever you need... I worked very hard to figure out a solution, hopefully I can save you a bit of the headache we went through...
----First for us it was only related to nighttime diapers. Daytime diapers never bothered them at all. For a while we used disposables at night but always cloth during the day. The nighttime diapers often had a strong ammonia smell in the morning when we had blister issues. Not always but most of the time...
So I'd figure that even if you do have to resort to disposables at night (temporarily or even long-term) you should at least be able to keep up cloth during the day. If you don't want to go with regular disposables for environmental reasons you could try using one of those flushable diaper options (G diapers or that other cloth brand that recently came out with something similar). Use it inside a cloth diaper as a nighttime doubler. The diaper/cover will prevent any possible leaks that you could face with regular disposables and you won't have to invest in the more expensive Gpants that you're 'supposed' to use the flushable inserts with (I found the Gpants leak prone anyway). It'll help keep him as dry as a disposable and pretty much elliminate ammonia as a skin issue. But at the same time the inserts are flushable/compostable and have no plastic so they're much more eco-friendly than regular sposies.
----Second, I'm sure that mine were reacting to detergent build-up. Either because of the detergent itself or because of the ammonia formed because of a reaction between the urine and the detergent. If I used any kind of regular detergent it was almost sure that I'd get an ammonia stink in the mornings and they'd get blisters... It was less frequent if I rinsed the heck out of my diapers but who wants to run diapers through 3-4 hot cycles every time you wash????!!! And this was with my old top loader that used plenty of water...
What this could mean for you is that perhaps you're dealing with detergent build-up. For us any quantity of regular detergent just never seemed to rinse out enough to keep my girls blister-free but perhaps yours just need a good stripping and then you'll be fine (either forever or maybe you'll have to strip every few months or somethign). Try running them through a few hot washes with just plain water and see if that helps. When they're in the hot wash, keep an eye on them to check for suds and keep going till you see none. If you have an HE front loader it could be difficult to check for suds just because they use so little water (plus it also makes stripping out build-up more difficult). In that case try pouring a little hot water (say from an empty detergent bottle) through the detergent dispenser straight into the machine. You can usually get a lot of water in that way... You could also start them off with a heavy vinegar soak, just chug at least 4-6 cups (or half the jug or even the whole thing) in the washer and let them soak for a few hours. The acidity should help dislodge any mineral or detergent build-up.
----- In the end only two things really helped almost entirely elliminate the problem. The first was bleach. I tried it with some old diapers I had (didn't dare with my newer bamboo stash) and it seemed to work. Never had ammonia issues and never had blisters when I washed the diapers with a little bleach. I didn't like using bleach on a regular basis though (for many reasons - it's very harsh on fabrics, it's a safety hazard in the home and it's not exactly eco-friendly). But it did work and as much as I dislike bleach and don't believe in any way that it's necessary to use, I do believe that a little bleach every so often is still better than having to turn to disposables (even if it is only at night). You wouldn't have to use a lot every time, you may not even have to use it regularly. But if you're tried everything else and are about to give up, it's worth a shot.
The second thing that worked (my favorite solution and the one I currently still use) was soap nuts with a little washing soda. Soap nuts alone clean well, leave my clothes clean and my diapers clean, fresh and ammonia-free but the girls still got blisters with them sometimes. Stopped when I added just a smidge of washing soda (about 2 tablespoons for a full load). I'm not sure why but it worked. You might not need to though...
This is my exact routine with the girls bedwetter pants and a front loader (I don't think you need to get this complex but I thought I'd share anyway...). I dry pail and wash every 4-5 days. A bit longer than I should perhaps but it seems to be working and with them only needing anything at night it's the only time I have a reasonable size load. I'm still using up a large stash of cheap detergent for my clothing so for now at least I'd rather not wash diapers and clothing together. I rinse them in cold water with nothing. Then a sanitary cycle with 2-3 soap nuts and about one teaspoon of washing soda (I use so little because it's still not nearly a full load - for a full load I'd use about 3-4 nuts and about 2 tablespoons of washing soda). I'll usually chug in a couple jugs of hot water at the beginning of the first wash cycle so there's more water... Follow that with a plain hot wash. I don't like washing them that much and I don't like having to use a sanitary but the times I've experimented with less washes or no sanitary cycle I've had problems in a couple washes. Considering we're almost done with diapers and how horrible those blisters are, I just don't think it's worth my experimenting with variations on this routine. If they were younger and we had a longer time left in diapers then I might be willing to try altering things a bit.
Other random thoughts....
- Free & Clear detergents can be problematic for some people. They're often designed for those with allergies and have ingredients in them to combat pollen. Some children react to these ingredients and/or they can cause detergent build-up. A bit of a stretch since he never reacted before but I thought it was worth mentioning. Maybe when he was smaller and had less potent urine it wasn't a problem, but now the two combined just tipped the balance or something... Many believe that F&C detergents are better for cloth but really they're at best marginally better because they don't contain dyes and fragrances (that's the only difference, they're not really any more gentle and still usually contain stuff like brighteners, stain guards etc...). Dyes & perfumes aren't usually a problem when it comes to washing diapers, just that some babies are sensitive to them.
- Unless you've found it to be an absolutly essential part of your washing routine, maybe try skipping the baking soda. I don't think it's particularly problematic as a laundry additive but who knows. Might be worth a shot, just as a way of elliminating all the possibilities, however remote.
- I noted you said that you used little of your detergent. Is it possible you're using too little detergent? I know I'm contradicting my earlier suggestion that the problem was detergent build-up. It's usually more typical that people use too much detergent (and so it builds-up causing odor and sometimes rash issues) but it is possible to use too little detergent. Sometimes in our zeal to avoid build-up problems we swing too far the other way and then end up with bacteria build-up problems. Maybe check and see what happens with a hot wash with no detergent - if you see lots of suds then it's more likely build-up. But if you see no suds at all then it could be the opposite.
HTH, I know how horrible and frustrating those stupid blisters can be!!
Karen. |
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We've been having the same problem for the past few months, with sores exactly the way Karen described. We just couldn't get rid of them! The ped. said it was 'contact rash' from where her skin was touching the wet diaper (and his advice was to use disposables 'til it cleared up - sigh!). My daughter spent TONS of time with no diaper on - and peeing on every surface in our house  - which helped a whole lot to heal the sores, but every time she'd go to bed with a diaper, new blisters would pop up.
We tried all different creams (Boudreaux's Butt Paste, Desitin, zinc oxide), but none really seemed to help - in fact they seemed to make it worse. What finally worked was a combination of things: changing detergents (from Country Save to another free & clear type), peak orange/tangerine season ended (she had been eating one or two a day), AND the one fix that tops my list: we started using Lansinoh on her rash and it works SO, SO well!
I'm sorry you're having this problem, I know how frustrating it can be. |
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| So I had one more thought, mostly because I was just deciding what my next detergent experiment will be, and that is to wonder if the detergent you are using contains enzymes. Apparently some kids can react to them. Some have mild redness, while some can get blisters (while many others have no apparent issues at all, of course). I think you would have seen issues with this previously, but reading about blisters in this context made me think about your poor babe. |
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thank you all so much for your advice. We have been letting him run naked - which he loves - this seams to be helping. We have checked the diapers for build up, but there was none. I found a cream can't remember the name right now that is helping. We have also changed him before we go to bed. Slowly but surely I think it is getting better. I really appreciated your encouragement.
Thanks |
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My sweet baby girl has CF, so she can get very bad diaper rash, open bleeding sores, when her enzyme dosage is upped. The solution: mix some Karaya powder into your diaper cream until it's thick and pasty. Karaya powder is used for colostomy patients, ask for it at your local pharmacy - they may be willing to order it in for you if they don;t have it on hand. We've also used Ostomy powder, same thing, but it's a tiny bottle and more expensive.
We were using Desitin (yes, all our CDs smell of fish, but whatev) to mix the Karaya into, and I recently switched to Li'l Goat's Milk and it seems to work well too. Better smelling and eventually the Desitin smell will come out.
Good luck! |
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