severe nappy rash advice

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My 18 month old ds is suffering from horrendous nappy rash. He has never suffered with it before now. He has diarrhoea and his poo is like acid, which is causing him so many problems. The rash is so raw and bleeds, when he does a poo he screams and screams and reaches round to his bottom.

We've seen the dr last week who prescribed canestan (sp) and that didn't do anything. Saw a dr yesterday who prescribed timodine cream and so far that's made no difference either.

He is eating and drinking like normal, we've no idea where the diarrhoea has come from or how to stop it. Don't think he's teething.

We are using water wipes or just water and cotton wool on the rash.

Has anyone got any advice on what we can do? We're desperate to help him, he's in so much pain.

Metanium and as much nappy free time as you can manage

We had similar at 17mo- still have no idea what caused ours either but my DD was doing around 6 very very loose poos per day. She was still eating and drinking and was full of energy and nursery were mystified too. GP thought it was a bug that brought on a temp lactose intolerance.

We did loads and loads of nappy free time. As soon as she got home and we were in for the night then I used to strip her nappy off and get loads of air to her bum. I used to give her a soak in the bath in plain water in the morning and evening and then had more nappy free to let her bum dry naturally. We were also used to apply a v v thin layer of metanium at every nappy change.

We did also switch away from cows milk and she's been on soya ever since. She can have dairy but I did avoid it for 4 weeks to give her gut a chance to rest. The nappy rash cleared up after a week of nappy free etc time though. Personally I found timodene useless and I swear by metanium.

And dry with a hairdryer when you can't manage nappy-free time.

I was about to say you should try to find the cause - if he had a stomach bug, it's possible that he has temporary lactose intolerance, which means (if I remember well) that the lining of the gut is irritated and reacts when drinking dairy. Ds had that and we ended up putting him on a dairy free diet for about 4-5 days. It really helped. For rash, try to let him have two baths a day and have a nice long soak, use hair dryer on gentle setting to dry his bum. We used Metanium cream during break outs but the more gentle bepanthen when his bum was ok.

Poor thing! Has it been going on long? It is possible to have a temporary lactose intolerance after they've had a bug, so may be worth reducing the amount he has in the meantime? DD had horrendous nappy rash and over the time she had it we used pretty much everything, nothing fixed it completely, but I found vaseline lip-balm with aloe-vera in to be the best - bizarre I know. Keep the nappies off as much as possible or you could try different nappies? Which may react differently?

Thanks for the replies, some really interesting points!
I spoke to the dr again and we're going to provide a stool sample and they will test that to see if we can find the cause of the loose poo. Interesting that a couple of you found that cutting dairy out helped your child. That's definitely something we can try.

We changed nappies a few days ago and that's made no difference. Having his nappy changed is just so painful for him, never heard him cry like this!

We've actually had the longest time between dirty nappies since this started a week ago, today, so maybe that's a sign it's starting to abate. Fingers crossed!!

Highly recommend yellow Metanium cream for nappy rash but agree keep trying dr if doesn't clear up as sounds so painful

Caldescene powder mixed with bepanthan cream, mix it into a paste in your hand and put a thick layer on at every nappy change. Also if you can have a little bath once or twice a day, even in a basin of warm water, dry with a soft towel and apply the mixture above it should go very quickly.
Sorry its awful, when the children were teething, their nappies were like hot lava! Hope your baby is on the mend soon x x

also try switching from using water based cleaning methods to olive oil + cotton wool. This really helped DD. A mix of caneston + metanium cream after cleaning along with using olive oil sorted her right out.

Today the rash has been so much better!! The timodine must have stated working, along with much more normal nappies!! We have a much happier boy today

Hi op my dd1 had very bad nappy rash when she was 14 mo. Anyway i found the only method really help was that I didnot use water or anything as I try to keep her skin try. So instead I use some good quality tissues to clean off the worse. Then use the tissue with Vaseline to clean further. Then just put the nappy back on. No water or no baby wipes. My dd s skin improved alot just in a couple of day.