There's No Such Thing as Diaper Rash Immunity

Before Ethan's birth I was so excited to CD {a silly thing to be excited for, huh?} but after he was born I had my doubts. With practice and a slow start, Dan and I became comfortable with CD-ing. Maybe a little too comfortable. Maybe we should call it cocky. Can you be cocky with how you diaper your baby? Yes. Yes, you can.

In all the articles and comments I had read on the internet, no one ever had their baby get diaper rash. Not a one. It was very much the opposite. Most testimonies claimed that cloth diapering was the reason their baby "never had diaper rash." Those are big claims. And I believed every one. I had made the glorious decision to CD our baby and thus it was impossible for him to get diaper rash. I was so confident that I refused to purchase diaper cream, even just in case.

Oh, yeah. Back to reality. The impossible happened while we were cloth diapering Ethan and the past few weeks have been a hot mess of diaper rash. I want to publish my testimony on the world wide web so that there is some modicum of reality available to new CD-ing mamas. Cloth diapers may prevent babies sensitive to certain disposables from developing diaper rash as a reaction to the diaper itself, but CD-ing does not equal diaper rash immunity. The "never had diaper rash" claim is too good to be true.

Babies experience so much growth and change, it is no wonder that their little digestive tracts are also affected. For the past few weeks I saw changes in Ethan's waste that I knew could not be attributed to any changes in my diet {there were none}. I could only chalk it up to growth and change in him. Sadly this change did not sit well with his little bum. Boy, was I glad for all the sample packets of Butt Paste BuyBuyBaby sent me!

Unfortunately, conventional diaper cream does not play nice with cloth diapers. When I finally remembered this, we had been using diaper cream with our CDs for about a week an a half. I was in no mood to purchase the cloth diaper safe creams, so I settled for putting a dry cloth wipe in the diaper as a barrier. Both laundry and hassle upped their game until I finally threw in towel after the third week and bought a tube of conventional diaper cream and a package of disposable diapers.

Oh, the relief! It was a great feeling to stop fighting reality and face the issue without an overbearing bias. The cream worked and Ethan's rash vanished. And I am happy to have him back in his colorful cloth diapers {although some stripping was necessary}. This whole saga has been a good reminder to take this crazy life day by day without the expectation that our situation will be like "this mama's" or "that baby's." Dan, Ethan, and I have our own figuring out to do. The sooner we realize that, the sooner we can move on to happy bums and baby giggles.

Vi ses senare!
Emily