Baby grabbing her bits and making herself very sore!!

[ASomers]

My 8mo grabs her vulva everytime I take off her nappy 😳

I know this is very normal but she's really rough with herself and now she has lots of little red marks all over and the area looks very sore. I obviously keep her nails trimmed and I try my best to stop her grabbing herself at nappy changes but this is tricky when I'm trying to change her. Plus she does the same thing in the bath. If I pull her hands away, they go straight back so it's impossible to stop her...

I feel really bad that she has such sore looking skin...anyone else experienced the same thing? Anything I can put on the area to soothe it?

Are you sure the grabbing preceded the redness, might she be itchy?

@mysocalledloaf

Yes, the redness definitely came after the grabbing.

The marks are from where she's grabbed herself rather than anything like a rash. It's definitely that she's exploring rather than itching.

Distraction
Give her a soft toy to hold while you change her

I was going to say give her something else to hold as well.

My almost 1 year old used to do this every single time I changed her nappy, it drove me mad cause then she gets all red and it looks sore! I usually give her something to hold which has stopped her doing it.

Why the embarrassed icon?

All of my children have done this (2 DDs 1 DS). As others have said, I just gave them something to hold.

Never worried me as I assumed it's fairly normal. It's something there that they don't usually have access to as it's under a nappy so naturally they will want to investigate.

@runway I said that I understand it's very normal 🙄

Thank you for the replies. I do this when I'm changing her nappy but I think the bath is the real tricky one. She does play with bath toys but there's no stopping her inbetween.

Ah well, I guess there's nothing else I can really do.

Thanks all

Could the redness be a normal increase in blood flow as a reaction to the stimulation? Sorry- I only have boys and I've never found anything that distracts them reliably

@user0ne

Possibly, although the marks are always there. The general area just gets more red after being grabbed so possibly just stimulation. I also agree that distraction works only for a little bit. Sometimes there's nothing that can compete to capture her attention!