Saturday, July 12, 2014

When Cradle Cap Strikes, Strike Back!

“Cradle Cap”  - thick scales of yellow dried skin attacking your baby’s soft downy head. Oh no! Sometimes it even covers their forehead and eyelids and looks absolutely horrendous and uncomfortable. If you've seen cradle cap on your baby's head you probably started googling for answers.

Why does my baby have cradle cap? What is the best treatment for cradle cap?

Often time I've found parents buy sensitive skin creams, lotions and potions only to find the problem gets worse.  New parents are told, it’s a normal baby skin finding and will eventually resolve on it s own.   Months and Months go by with the issue looking better on some days and horrible on others.  You start asking yourself, is it something I am eating?  A food intolerance?

Here are my thoughts on cradle cap: it is the skin’s response to irritants, it is the body’s defense against insult, it is the scalp’s way of attempting to protect the new follicles developing.  It is something that develops over time, babies are NOT born with it and so that tells me that it is developed due to exposure to something and most likely that “something” is products, and may even be the very products you are using to “fix” this issue.

A lot of marketing goes into the labels on products. Words like gentle, soothing, natural and hypoallergenic are all meant to convince us that we must buy that product to help soothe whatever issue our babies are experiencing.  Those products that seem to have been around forever, even those still used today in the hospital, have changed throughout the years and the chemical makeup is more irritating, the preservatives more caustic and the product overall not what we want to use on fragile baby skin.

My advice, be meticulous with your product use.  If you start to notice irritations on your baby’s head, face or body discontinue use of all products, washes, shampoos, lotions and creams and simply use warm water with coconut or olive oil.

No comments:

Post a Comment