Comfort Skin Therapy research recommends treating eczema in children, by bathing them daily.
NHS Choices recommend bathing your children 2-3 times a week, yet 1 in 5 parents bath their child just once a week.
How often do you bath your children?
Do you enjoy bathing them or do you find it stressful?
New research from the makers of Oilatum shows that 45% of parents find their child’s bath time one of the most stressful parts of their day and some even put it off.
Do any of your children have Eczema?
Comfort Skin Therapy is a new advice booklet from the makers of Oilatum. Here are some of their top tips to bathing children with eczema, based on their most recent research.
The Top 5 Five Bath Time Tips for children with dry skin and eczema from Comfort Skin Therapy:
-
All children are different and treatment for a dry skin condition, including eczema, can vary according to what works for you, however it is always important when managing dry skin conditions, to restore the ‘skin barrier’, to stop the skin becoming drier and more irritated.
-
Emollients moisturise and soften the skin which can reduce itching and therefore scratching, and bathing in emollients every day helps to keep the skin supple and helps prevent infections in scratches and sore patches.
-
Add a bath emollient oil to the bath water to help prevent the skin from drying out – try to choose one designed specifically for children with dry skin.
-
The temperature of the bath water should not be too warm or hot – try to match the bath water as close to the bathroom air temperature as you can as changes in temperature can aggravate dry skin.
-
After the bath, pat your child’s skin dry (try to avoid ‘rubbing’ the skin too much with the towel), and then apply an emollient moisturiser to all areas of dry skin to help seal the water back in.
Why am I sharing this with you?
Bunny has Eczema, which comes and goes and Fluffy has just developed Eczema too. Tiny, so far, is okay. I thought both the info from Comfort Skin Therapy and also my own experiences, might be interesting to others.
I bath my three girls all twice a week, as I don’t want their skin to dry out. Controversial advice suggests that bathing doesn’t dry their skin out – but water does, and bathing certainly does with my children. I also think that daily bathing is unnecessary, especially with babies, who are babywiped numerous times a day anyway! Busy mums don’t have the time to do it every day. It takes a good hour for me to bath, moisturise, dry and dress my three girls. But those are just my thoughts, research on this is contradicting and often opinionated (like me). Twice a week, coincides with NHS advice, so I’m happy with that.
I generally use Baby products (wash/ bubble bath/ shampoo) on all of my children, even though Bunny is 6years old and I always moisturise their skin after a bath. When their Eczema flares up, I use Oilatum Junior Bath Additive in the bath and an Oilatum emollient on their skin afterwards. This usually clears up the eczema straight away.
Comfort Skin Therapy suggest that eczema presents itself differently in different children and is also treatable differently in each child. Their new guide to treating eczema in children, gives good advice for all cases. I’ve attached it for you to download as a PDF below or you can visit the advice page on Netmums.
Comfort Skin Therapy (PDF)
How often do you bath your children?
My son (3yo) has eczema and my daughter had it when she was very tiny. However, our bath doesn’t drain well (or at all) at the best of times and Oilatum made it ten times worse. We decided to stop using it and just use lots of Dermol to keep his skin moisturised. I try to bathe my kids once every other day, but sometimes, like today, I have failed to clean the bath after a grass-washing-off incident or something and baths are on hold until I get my act together.
Judith recently posted..Breastfeeding one year on
Interestingly when my eldest (now 12) was a baby I was advised not to bath her very often because of her Eczema as it was believed water dried the skin even more. So I didn’t! However I bathe the boys regularly, but not everyday at all…and enjoy every minute, they love baths!
That’s really interesting to read. I bath S every night. It’s part of our bedtime routine and always has been. I use Cussons Mum & Me in the bath and their lotion afterwards. S had dry skin as a little baby, so I used an emollient then instead.
I didn’t know the recommendation was not every night. S would really miss it if I changed that now
BakedPotato Mummy recently posted..SnuggyBub Wrap (A Review)
I think the guidelines are more of a minimum. I don’t think there’s any issue with daily bathing, unless it makes their skin worse – which in some children it does, and in some it doesn’t. It’s great to have a routine. X
Interesting post…my friend’s 5 month old baby has eczema and has been looking for products to use, and I’ve just sent this post to her 🙂 Just wanted to mention that I used to have really bad eczema (for 10 years) before I started The Flawless 30-day Program for my skin. After just 21 days my contact dermatitis cleared up right away—more effective and faster than any other creams I was using before! The program focused on health, and finding out what “eczema triggers” you may have, to prevent the eczema from coming back in the future. For me it was dairy and gluten that was causing my eczema, and I had to cut it out for a while to completely heal my skin. 🙂 Afterwards I was able to go back to some dairy and wheat, but I notice that it flares if I eat too much. Does your baby have any food intolerances that could be causing the eczema to return on a regular basis? (Just a thought because you mentioned that the eczema comes and goes) 🙂 Good luck with everything!
Christina