Nappy rash

[Natt]

My 11-month-old boy has been having a bad bout of nappy rash. the one time this happened before it cleared up with very frequent changes and lots of Drapolene. This time, despite trying lots of changse (including 3 or 4 at night, ughh) nappy free time, drapolene (and other creams), he doesn't seem to be shaking it. Any thoughts before I take him to the GP???

Have you tried metanium cream, available from pharmacies? This often clears up persistent nappy rash where other creams don't work. You could also try switching nappy brand.
If there are white, curdy spots on his rash what he might possibly have is thrush, and there are other things it could be, so I'd have a word with the doctor in any case. Hope he feels better soon.

Don't know if this will help...
Is your son teething ? If so, this may be linked and therefore WILL go away within a few days. (Nappy rash happens for a reason - if you can find out you can try to resolve the problem).
DS keeps having bad nappy rashes everytime a tooth comes out. I use sudocream and leave him without his nappy at least twice a day for at least 30 minutes.

Ditto marina and metanium, it worked brilliantly for us, hadnt heard of it for Baby 1, but has been a blessing this time round.

Metanium fantastic, use sparingly though.

See other bits on this site as I'm sure we've talked about this before, I recommended Calendula to take the intensity of the rash down

My son was really bad with nappy rash and we used Conotrane cream on it (you can buy it over the counter). We also used to put egg white on his bum, it really really helped!

Mima!! Where did you get that advice from? I have never heard of that one, its brilliant!!

Ditto to other remarks, our son got nappy rash when he was teething too. We did as others advised, plenty of 'bare bum time' and we also found putting a thick layer of sudacrem and then also putting a layer of vaseline over the sudocrem at the nappy change for night time really helped! He's bum was always better the next morning. which ever advise you decide use the same cream for a few days before changing as constantly changing to different creams can upset he's skin balance too and could hinder its clear up.

hope it gets better soon, it's not very nice for him or you is it....

Egg white is an old remedy for sore botts, but do be careful, in case your baby has an undiahnosed egg allergy.

Metanium, Metanium, Metanium...I'll say no more!!

If you are using real cotton nappies, silk liners are very good, cost about £2 each, just line the nappy overnight with no barrier cream and this will get rid of the nappy rash.

You can also make your own nappy rash remedy. Use a 1/4 muslin, soaked in Chamomile & honey tea, then used instead of a liner works really well. It seems weird using something damp to cure nappy rash but it seems to almost cure the rash overnight. Chamomile is excellent on sore skin - if you can get some as an essential oil, Tea tree and lavender have very similar effects, so you may only want to use one or the other (they are perfectly safe together, though, provided your baby can tolerate tea tree).

Furthermore, if you child is teething, midwives used to recommend lemon barley water, it reduces the acid in the urine which causes red bottoms.

I'm not convinced by the egg white theory. Anyone know if there is any scientific basis to using it? When I was nursing (many moons ago) there used to be an old technique of using egg white on pressure (bed) sores....I think the idea was to 'feed' the skin - but it was proven to be a load of rubbish and, if anything could be harmful due to increasing the risk of infection of the sore....Hence my scepticism re: its use on nappy rash.

Think I'll stick to metanium and sudocreme...

I swear by the camomile tea trick Wends mentions further down - it's worked for my daughter 99% of the time - just soak a nappy liner or muslin in camomile tea and it clears it up a treat.

another devotee to metanium. How is your little boy, Natt? What did you try?

I found that soon after my daughter was born she started getting the worst nappy rash. It got so bad that it was raw and bleeding and it even got infected...I tried all the usual suspects to clear it up. But I did notice that certain things made it worse: wet wipes, baby lotion....so I stopped using that. Instead to wipe her bottom I used cotton wool with warm water, or Baby Oil GEL which you can get in boots.

It started to clear up but would not go away completely. By this time I had realised that she was highly allergic to LANOLIN...which is in just about everything. Then the penny dropped. The Pampers nappies had lotion in them that was released when she pissed....the lotion had lanolin (I rang the company) as soon as I switched to Huggies (which have no lotion) the nappy rash cleared up and she has not had it to this day.

I can't begin to describe what a treat it was when the extra sensitive wipes were brought out...she is fine with those too.

Just a thought though, it might be the regular stuff you use, the wipe and nappies. ALOT of people young and old are allergic to lanolin.

Hope you manage to sort something out soon.

Thanks everyone - am definitely going to get metanium and try eggwhite in future. swapping creams midway was definitely ill-advised as well. In fact GP thought it might be thrush and prescribed something called timodine. Things are improving slowly whether because of the timodine or because of the heavy layer of barrier cream and frequent changes am not sure!!!

My Daughter was born unable to swallow, after numerous ops to correct this and stop her being sick, she has been left with the most horendous diarrhoe every day. I have tried all the usual nappy rash treatments, prescribed etc, but just the other day discovered Calendula ointment on a web site, within 24 hours her bum was clearing. I hope this might help other desperate mums as this prob is a nightmare. It is homeopathic so not harmful etc.