The Ultimate Guide to Baby Care Products: What to Buy and What to Skip

As a new parent, you must be extremely cautious of the newborn baby products you buy and pay close attention to what is on the label, making sure that they are safe. Each year dozens of ingredients are revealed to be unsafe and unfit for use in baby products.

A newborn's skin is extremely delicate and sensitive and there appear to be so many baby products to choose from. So it is not surprising that new parents struggle to find the right products for their infants.

As a parent, you only want the best for your child, but it can be challenging to navigate parenthood. So we made a list of crucial factors to take into account before buying anything that will come into contact with your baby's delicate skin to help make things a bit easier. As with many things, sometimes taking baby steps towards making better product selections is best.  Start by slowly swapping out bad for better and better for best products.

A Few Things to Take into Account When Buying for Your Newborn

You want to prevent allergies, irritation, and skin rashes in your child as much as you can, right? This is why it is crucial to educate oneself before making any baby product purchase. Below are the steps to take.

Read the Labels Carefully

Online baby care product shopping could be a hassle for first-time parents. It will be challenging to choose one product from the numerous that are offered. The packaging looks nice, but don’t be fooled by “green washing” or fancy looking branding. Often the beautiful branding is hiding yucky ingredients. 

We tend to be persuaded by words that are difficult to say and claims that may or may not be entirely true. So it's better to stick to things that are as natural as possible when it comes to your child. To protect your baby's skin, read product labels carefully and steer clear of anything that contains colors or chemicals. Using a website like https://www.ewg.org/skindeep/ to check ingredients is useful when starting out.

Look For Hazardous or Unsafe Chemicals

For sensitive baby skin, some chemicals might be too harsh. Some infants skin is so sensitive that just coming into contact with some chemicals can cause a break out or rash. Look for signs of allergies when you give your baby a new lotion, detergents, clothing or other baby product. If you've already discontinued use of a product, look for any fragrances, cleansers, thickeners, and solvents that might be found in the new products you’re using and conduct some research to prevent negative reactions. Often times, rashes, irritation, baby acne, hives and dryness is caused by fragrances, sodium lauryl sulfate, parabens, harsh alcohol and detergents.  Just by removing these items can often cause improvements in your baby’s skin.

Feel free to ask your pediatrician if they have an opinion on certain products or ingredients but make sure you do your own research. Not all doctors stay up to date on new findings concerning ingredients that may or may not be safe.

To guarantee your baby's safety, find out if the baby products you're considering have undergone allergy testing, third party testing, and stability testing. Using natural cosmetics free of dangerous chemicals is the safest option; your baby's skin will stay smooth and you won't have to worry about allergies.

Melatonin for Kids

Check Their Skin Regularly

Be aware of any reactions to your baby’s skin. Often times it happen quickly within a few minutes. If you notice a rash, use the method of reducing products to find the culprit. 

If you're still not sure about a company's claims, check parent reviews to get an honest assessment of the goods and do some basic research on ingredients to become educated.

Fragrances are destroying your baby’s skin

While it's true that scents are calming, they could also irritate your child's skin. Modern skincare products use synthetic aromas to cover up the smell of the chemicals they contain, which is unpleasant. When you put scented products on your infant, the fragrance could linger for hours, causing respiratory difficulties in your youngster. In addition to causing respiratory issues, fragrances dry out the skin since the main ingredient in fragrances is alcohol.  Alcohols dehydrate the skin which causes the skin to dry out and causes rashes, irritation, dryness, redness, skin bumps, eczema and can even cause bleeding.

For delicate areas like your baby's diaper area, use a diaper cream that is made of zinc oxide, aloe, shea butter as these ingredients protect and repair the skin.  Zinc oxide will prevent stool and urine from being in contact with the skin causing a rash.  We always recommend applying a diaper cream with each diaper change even if there is not a rash present. This is because it helps prevent a rash and it makes soiled diaper changes a breeze since the stool doesn’t stick to the skin.