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Sunday, March 4, 2012

Getting rid of a yeasty diaper rash

For the past couple of months (yes, months...it has been awful) Cooper has had a yeasty diaper rash.  It gets a little better, it gets way worse, etc.  It has been terrible.  I mean his little butt bleeds kind of terrible.  And we had kinda given up.  We just figured he had really sensitive skin and there wasn't much we could do beyond continuing to treat the symptoms.  Then I heard that yeast can live in cloth diapers.  The diapers give the yeast to Cooper and Cooper gives the yeast to the diapers in a horrible cycle of pain and misery.  So, for the time being, Cooper is not wearing the cloth diapers.  I have washed and washed them (3 times over 5 days) in a particular manner to kill the yeast.  Here is what I did (and I borrowed a bunch of these ideas from other blogs):

1. Wash on cold with a tiny bit of detergent and vinegar.
2. Wash on cold with a tiny bit of detergent and 20 drops of grapefruit seed extract oil in 2 oz. of water.
3. Wash on hot (sanitize cycle) with a tiny bit of detergent and bleach and then an extra rinse.
4. Wash on hot (normal cycle) with nothing in it, just water to make sure all the bleach was out of everything (extra rinse here as well).
5. Dry them in the dryer on high (except the outer pockets that can't be dried).

So hopefully, his diapers are now yeast free.  To get his booty yeast free, I turned to an unlikely substance: coconut oil.  Brad, being a doctor and therefore opposed to this kind of treatment, made fun of me.   But I persisted, and his butt looks better than it has in ages.  I think he needs a couple more days of coconut oil and disposable diapers, just to make sure ALL of the yeast is gone.  I definitely don't want to have to start this whole process over.

Oh, and one other thing we did was switch to cloth wipes.  Supposedly, regular wipes have stuff in them that yeast eat, so it encourages the yeast to stick around.  Gross.  So I got some BabiesRUs wash cloths.  I get them wet with a little warm water and wipe him that way.  They even agreed to do it at school; they've seen how bad his butt can be.  Think that's it!

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