Last week, I decided to try the Nature Clean detergent for washing my daughter’s diapers.  I usually use soapnuts, but I really wanted to find something that I could just throw in and forget about until the wash was done.  I chose Nature Clean because it had been recommended to me by some cloth diapering  moms and because it’s available in my supermarket store.  Well, things didn’t go too well.  My daughter got a diaper rash due to detergent residue which eventually turned into a yeast rash.  I wasn’t impressed, to say the least.

When my daughter was a couple months old, I discovered that most diaper rash creams do not work on yeast rashes.  An anti-fungal cream, which you can get without a prescription in any pharmacy, works well.  I prefer to use natural creams though.  So, this time I used the Substance Nappy Rash Ointment and an Antimicrobial Salve that I just got recently from a wonderful lady at Wildroot Botanicals.  By themselves, the rash ointments didn’t work very well, that’s why I added the antimicrobial salve.  Besides using the creams, I would also use bamboo fleece fitted diapers with or without a wool cover.  I’m happy to say that the rash was almost completely gone within 24 hours!

How have you dealt with diaper rashes?  Do you have any “secret” remedies that you’d like to share?

Before we switched to cloth diapers, my daughter was getting a lot of diaper rashes.  After doing some research on diaper rash creams, I decided to try some natural ones.  Since my daughter had at least a couple of yeast diaper rashes, I decided to try the Motherlove Diaper Rash & Thrush Relief cream.  It was an expensive cream, but it did work well for us.  Once the cream was gone, I decided to go with something a little more readily available.

The diaper rash cream I decided to try next is made by Lunar Eclipse and is available in Loblaws-owned supermarket stores.  It’s the cream I still use from time to time.  It’s not the cheapest diaper rash cream, but you shouldn’t be using a lot of it.  If you find that you do need to use diaper rash creams a lot then something’s definitely not right.  I would either try a different detergent (if using cloth diapers) or a different diaper.  Some rashes that do not want to go away might be something more serious, so please check with your doctor.

Other natural diaper rash creams I’ve used:

• Weleda diaper cream
  It’s not an amazing cream but I still use it from time to time – as a natural sunscreen.  It contains zinc oxide which isn’t recommended for cloth diapers.
• Substance Nappy Rash Ointment
  It smells a little strong because of the essential oil used.  It contains myrrh which is good for yeast rashes.
• Budger Baby Balm
  Quite a strong smell because of the essential oil used.  A little too runny in my opinion.  Might be great for massaging though.

If you need to use something everyday to prevent and protect from rashes, I would recommend using organic extra virgin olive oil and/or organic coconut oil.  Extra virgin olive oil has anti-inflammatory properties and coconut oil is anti-microbial which might be great for killing that stubborn yeast responsible for quite a few diaper rashes.