Dealing with Diaper Rash
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Burt's Bees Diaper Ointment is a great barrier cream that won't dissolve when wet.
Cloth diapers are breathable and much better for baby’s bum than disposables, but even so you may occasionally deal with a bout of diaper rash. Here are a few common causes of diaper rash and what you can do to prevent and heal it:
Cause & Effect: Baby has stomach upset, thrush, or food allergies, which have caused a rash or irritation on his bum where his skin is wet. This kind of rash will often appear between baby’s cheeks, where moisture hangs out, because the moisture, or the content of the moisture, is causing the rash.
Fix: Try a cloth-diaper-friendly diaper rash barrier cream, such as Burt’s Bees Diaper Ointment, which create a waterproof barrier on baby’s skin to prevent further irritation and give him a chance to heal. Cloth diapers may eventually get buildup on them if you overuse diaper ointments, and that could cause them to repel moisture and need to be stripped to restore their absorbency, but if you use an ointment that only requires a small amount to be rubbed into baby’s skin (Burt’s Bees, California Baby Calming Cream, Magic Stick), you will have a much lower chance of running into this problem than if you use a cream like Desitin that needs to be globbed on. One more product you might try to heal rashes is Earth Mama Angel Baby’s Baby Bottom Balm, which is good for cuts and scrapes, too. We found that it helped speed up diaper rash healing when used along with Burt’s Bees diaper ointment and an anti-fungal cream.
Cause & Effect: Baby has reacted to your diaper detergent. This kind of rash could appear anywhere the cloth of the diaper is pressing against his skin. The more detergent you use, the worse it gets, because the detergent is not rinsing completely out of your diapers.
Fix: If you suspect a sensitivity to your detergent, first run all your diapers through a couple of hot wash cycles without any detergent, to make sure your diapers don’t have detergent residue in them. Sometimes if you have had stink issues, you may have tried using more detergent, when actually you would get better results from using less detergent. If your detergent isn’t rinsing out of your diapers completely, it will actually cause stink to linger in your diapers and could potentially irritate baby’s skin.
If you have ruled out detergent residue, next make sure you are using a detergent that doesn’t have any enzymes in it, as these can also cause rashes. If your detergent passes the no-enzyme test, you may have a baby with extra-sensitive skin and should try as basic a detergent as you can find, preferably unscented. Try unscented Rockin’ Green or Crunchy Clean detergents, Charlie’s Soap, or even soap nuts, which are a natural soap made from the dried fruit of an Asian tree (you are getting crunchier by the minute just reading this, lol).
Questions? Do you have a diaper rash problem that isn’t addressed by the ideas above? If so, please let me know in comments, or contact me, and I will try to find a solution for you. The best thing you can do for diaper rash is to act quickly. We let a yeast rash worsen for two weeks while trying to treat it with Nystatin (the standard treatment) before it actually bled 
and we went back to the doctor to tell him we needed a stronger medicine. Poor baby girl! Once we had a stronger anti-fungal cream to use AND we discovered how well Burt’s Bees ointment really stuck to baby’s skin instead of just dissolving when wet like other creams, things improved quickly. Diaper rash is no fun for baby or parents! Good luck, and also please let me know if any of these tips helped you, or if you have tips to add to the list.
