My baby has a 'fold' neck and I can't keep it clean - any advice?

[GlitteringJasper]

Baby is 16 weeks and has a neck with folds in it as she's quite chubby. She sort of makes her neck disappear and keeps her chin hunched. Anyway because of this no air gets at her neck and it gets really dirty and smelly no matter how much I try and clean it.

I put her on her tummy and she will hold her head up so it gets aired that way but she doesn't want to stay like this for very long.

I tried Vaseline but she came out in a rash. Sudocream hasn't helped either.

I wash and dry this area everyday but it still looks red and raw. What else can I try?

Tried drying with a hairdryer on low after being washed?

For feeds try the tommee tippee milk feed bibs, they have a little ridge around the neck.

My DS was also chubby and I had the same problem. I treated the redness with Bepanthen nappy rash cream, just a thin layer after washing and drying the area. It really helped.

My DD is like this. We stop it from getting milky with a well tucked in muslin during feeds. She has a bath about once a week, so we are careful to dry it then, but that obviously isn't very often. She doesn't dribble (yet), which helps. One of our friends' DS got a skin infection from having damp neck folds.

I dangle a toy above DD's head such that she stretches the head back to see it. Then I dab a small bit of powder along the deep folds until there are no damp bits left. Need to do this everyday after a bath or age starts to get sticky & smelly at the neck!

sudocrem or similar every day should do it unless there is already a fungal or bacterial infection - worth checking with hv perhaps?

My 12 week old ds is the same. I was just looking at it before his both today and it looked very red and angry. What would a skin or fungal infection look like?

Some babies are allergic to it, but I used aqueous cream as a wash and moisturiser. It's quite slippy (so careful she doesn't zoom through your hands!) but makes it very easy to wash folds of skin.

DS also wore a little neck thing like this so that milk and dribble didn't go down there.