How to Treat and Prevent Diaper Rash

How to Treat and Prevent Diaper Rash Male: There are very few things that can cause a more visceral reaction for a new and peeling back a diaper to reveal a bright, red, spotted baboon butt. Male: Today’s episode is all about diaper rash. Male: So to get the full 411 on diaper rash prevention and causes, we spoke to our favorite pediatrician and Baby 411 author, Dr. Ari Brown. Dr. Ari Brown: Diaper rash is an irritation of the skin when it’s been wet or soiled and if you sat in a wet or poopie diaper, your skin would probably get irritated too. So, garden variety diaper rash is just red. If you put some cream on it, any type of barrier cream whether it be Vaseline or a Zinc oxide based product like Balmex, DeSitin, that should do the trick. It should start to get better. And as long as you’re staying on top of diaper changes, keeping the moisture away should clear up on its own. Yeast diaper rash is a little bit different. It looks like raw meat with little pimples around it and that’s not going to get better with your regular diaper rash cream and so that actually needs any antifungal cream for brand name would be Lotrimin-AF. It will say it’s for jack itch but it treats the same stuff because yeast is very similar. So you use that which is never kind of product and it should get better on its own. But in either case, if the rash is not improving in the next few days after you have been treating it that’s when you need to call your doctor. If your child is really sensitive to moisture or poopie diapers, then you can put a barrier cream on the skin. Anything to protect the skin really works well so Vaseline or a ny basic diaper rash cream should do just fine. Just put it on at every diaper change and then you can protect the skin. For disposable diapers, the advantage is your child might have a wet diaper and there might not be as much moisture on the skin. But if you don’t stay on top of a disposable diaper and the child’s been sitting in a wet diaper for a while, the problem is still the same. Some children are actually sensitive to some brands of disposable diapers and so sometimes kids will come in with some irritation not in the genital area but actually along the sides where the elastic is on the disposable diaper or where the tabs are. And if that problem arises then you actually may need to change brands or go to cloth diapers. One thing parents should know about is that when their baby is taking antibiotics, it leaves them susceptible to getting a yeast infection in the diaper area. So if your child has been on antibiotics recently or still taking antibiotics and your baby develops a rash and it looks a little different than your usual diaper rash that you’ve seen before that’s when you should think about it being a yeast infection. When garden variety diaper rash heads really south where the skin gets so raw and irritated that maybe it’s even bleeding, that’s when you need to call the doctor because it’s possible that you need a prescription antibiotic cream or a thicker cream that they can prescribe to put on that diaper rash. Male: Some really good points there from Dr. Ari Brown and I agree that, I would say there’s more than just two kinds of diaper rash. I mean there’s like sub categories and multiple branches of the diaper rash tree. Male: The inferno is the worst. The other day, I peel back the diaper, poor little Myers steam. Male: I’m not sure it’s a diaper rash but you can tell there’s just redness, there’s these prickles. Sometimes it looks like a burn. It’s almost like you have that new born and you kind of can categorize the poop. I think you can categorize diaper rashes. That’s all for this week in the lab. If you’ve got thoughts on diaper rash prevention, stories about baboon butt in your family, join the conversation at dadlabs.com.