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So my son (2.5 months) has what I think is a contact rash - it looks like what you'd imagine if someone said they had a rash - pretty feathery, red, not raised, just a rash.
My daughter (19.5 months) has what I've been told may be bacterial or yeast - it looks like big blisters with white heads, along with really dry, wrinkly skin around the blisters.
I'm putting Penaten on my son, the NP suggested using Canesten, but she wasn't sure it was actually yeast. How quickly should the rash clear up if I'm using the canesten on him? Is there something better than Penaten for regular contact rashes? I don't really care if it's environmental or not - is Sudocream better?
As for my daughter, I have something like "Fluconin" and Canesten as well, which have helped a lot (the blisters look like scabs now). Because it's likely yeasty, should I boil my diapers once the rash goes away so that she doesn't get this again, and my son doesn't get it? How do you get rid of yeast?
Also, I washed my diapers in super hot water (as hot as my waterheater would go) and lots of tea tree oil. I then did a hot rinse to check for suds (there were none), so I don't think the contact rash is coming from buildup of detergent. Could it be ammonia? My diapers don't smell, but how would I get Ammonia out?
Also, my daughter and son have been sharing diapers. At the moment, my son is in disposables, and my daughter in the cloth because I was worried about him getting her rash, and she doesn't like disposables and complains about them (they also rub on her rash and she says owie). Any thoughts? Is sharing diapers ok?
Sorry there's so much, any thoughts would be helpful. I can't wait for these rashes to end and to get back to soft baby bums in soft cotton diapers. |
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Hmmm, ok first suggestion is if you're using rash creams with cloth I'd use some type of liner to prevent too much of it from getting on the cloth. That'll save you the headache of trying to figure out which is 'safe' for cloth and will work on the rash (plus really any cream that's used for a while could build-up in the diapers). Cream building up in the fabric isn't a big big deal but it could cause staining and maybe some funky fishy odors (regular Desitin has fish oils in it that many swear is excellent at healing skin but it's also very difficult to wash out of diapers and can leave them smelling fishy even when otherwise clean).
In theory yeast is pretty tough and you need some sort of anti-fungal agent to get rid of it. Think very high heat (like boiling, ironing or a sanitary cycle), bleach or some natural anti-fungals (like tea tree oil). High heat can be a bit risky for the snaps and elastic but many do it with no obvious ill-effects. Natural anti-fungals do work but it's debatable how well they work diluted in water and on fabric (there's no real studies on this to say how effective they are, the few studies that exist show that on hard surfaces they are fairly effective but not as much as bleach for example). Bleach is the only 'sure-thing' as far as killing the yeast goes, but it also has issues in terms of being not so eco-friendly, potentially rash causing and decreasing fabric longevity. If you do use it be sure to dilute it very well before it ever has contact with the diapers (I personally would not rely on a bleach dispenser in any machine to do this properly) and make sure that it's well rinsed afterwards.
All that said, many people do nothing and their diapers are fine. My dd had a yeast issue and I treated her skin but never her diapers (didn't know at the time that this would have been a good idea). No problems at all, her rash went away from a few days and never came back.
If you had ammonia problems you'd probably know it, the smell is very distinct and obvious. If you have a front loader a lack of suds doesn't necessarily mean anything, sometimes there's just too little water to really 'generate' the suds. You could always give them a good stripping and/or treat them for yeast just to be sure, but if there's no smell I wouldn't worry about ammonia.
Honestly other than possibly treating for yeast, I wouldn't worry too too much about the diapers for now. It could just be a coincidence that they're both rashy (and no there's certainly nothing wrong with sharing diapers - although if one has a yeast rash then it's not a bad precaution to keep things seperate until that's under control). Yeast happens to even disposable diapered babies so it's not something typically 'caused' by the type of diaper - it's just being in a diaper at all that's usually the problem (fungi and bacteria love warm & moist spots!).
HTH,
Karen. |
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