Bath times?🤯

[AstridJanetsMama]

Hi all,

I've got a 4.5 month old and I'm not sure how often I should be bathing her. We're currently at twice a week including hair wash both times (excluding sudden necessary baths).
I'm questioning because she has bad reflux and constantly ends up with sick in her hair. She's also on Nutramigen which absolutely stinks but I worry about bathing her too much and drying out her skin😕

Bonus question, anyone have any tips for that inevitable bald spot on the back of the head?🤔

I've posted about this a couple of times but my 9month old DD2 was in a research study from 0-6months old to do with bathing. We were told to bathe just once a week. Her skin was then compared to the skin of babies who were bathed as often as they liked. The results showed that less frequent bathing led to fewer skin conditions like eczema in the intervention group. I understand the researchers are now looking to repeat the study with 1000 babies to see if the results are the same. So based on that, I've drastically reduced how often i bathe DD2 in comparison to DD1. She has two baths a week and one of those includes hair washing (the one after we go swimming). She also had reflux and if we were inbetween bath days, i would just sponge her hair clean without doing a full wash (unless it was a really bad day where we would do a periodic extra bath). We are a family prone to allergies (DH has asthma, i have food allergies and hayfever) so I'm really hoping that by taking this approach, I'm giving her the best shot at avoiding drying out her skin!

We always did baths on days with a “t” in them. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday.

It's an interesting one.
DS had awful eczema as a baby and we were given opposite advice after no improvement with 1 bath a week - to bath everyday (he was also on nutrimagen- it really does stink! Should tlak to your doctor about aptimil pepti if it gets no better. That changed the game for us)

DS skin actually got better doing a bath everyday but I know this isn't the case for a lot of children with eczema.

I think start with every other day and go from there really. You soon get a feel of what works best for your baby.

FYI DS is 2.5 now - totally out grown eczema and milk allergies and has a bath.... whenever I can drag him into one 😄 twice a week is a good week...

I've not ever been brave enough to do it, but I've seen videos of people swaddling the baby and then sort of leaning them from the draining board (obv with a hand under their head!) into the kitchen sink to do a sort of hairdresser type hair wash. Might be easier with two people, one to hold and soothe the baby, the other to wash their hair.

I wasn't brave enough for the swaddling style hair washes @BertieBotts described either, but refluxy DD2 had quite a few hair washes lying on the changing mat with a good absorbent hand towel folded under her head. If you pour it slowly, you really don't need much water.

We also stuck a flannel/muslin/similar under her head in many places (but not when asleep or unsupervised, of course) – it catches the sick and if you then change it quickly, it avoids nearly so much going in the hair. We also rolled to the side to change rather than bringing her legs up, which seemed to just squeeze the milk out of her.

We did a bath everyday, but with no products. DS has mild eczema and this was fine for us, but we literally just used water and it was entirely for the routine

Once a week from newborn til weaning. Generally 2 a week now at 21 months and 3yrs. Can't leave my eldest hair longer than 4 days really

Bonus question, anyone have any tips for that inevitable bald spot on the back of the head?🤔

Leave it, it’ll grow back. Then you’ll miss it because it’s probably one of the most adorable things ever 🥹

I would bathe her when she’s dirty. If she has sick in her hair, I’d say she probably needs a bath. I’m pretty sure by that time we had a bath every or nearly every day, which didn’t cause any skin issues. But do it less frequently if it does.