– Baby Bathtime

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One of the things I was nervous about with a newborn was bathtime. Admittedly in the first 5 days bathtime consisted of luke-warm boiled water and cotton wool pads – not just because of my nervousness but I wanted to maximise the nutrients from the vernix on baby’s skin. But ever since it has been a regular part of our bedtime routine.

What to bath them in?

During my pregnancy I had looked at the options for bathtime – from a typical baby bath to baby seats that can be placed in a normal bath. The pros and cons of our options were:

Normal baby bath – a tried and tested solution; a design that has been around since I was a baby. The down-side being that to bathe baby requires physically supporting baby at all times. With a newborn I was quite nervous already, so I don’t think I would have been able to hold baby and bath him at the same time. The upside being you can bath baby anywhere in the house with this stand alone option.

Angelcare bath seat – the design of this seat allows you to place it in your regular tub and lie baby on the seat whilst simply holding them in place while you bathe them – they also do grey, pink or blue. An option we did seriously consider as I had heard lots of mums recommending it, but we have quite a deep bathtub so bending over into the tub would have been back-breaking. Plus, once baby can sit up you would need to upgrade to another bath option.

Shnuggle bath – I came across this brand during my search and there were many things that attracted us: it could be used from birth and its design provides support for baby – meaning I could bath baby by myself easily and less worry about holding/supporting baby at the same time. Plus being a stand alone bath meant it can be use in any room and it only takes 2 litres of water (so economical to use too!). We ended up using this bath from the very first one at 1 week through to 9 months, as the bum bump design provides support for baby when they are able to sit up.

As a stand alone bath it can be used on the floor as well as a surface – near the kitchen sink proved the preferred option for my partner who found it less back breaking. There is an option to purchase a stand for this bath too!

As they get older your options include: a bath seat (Angelcare ones came highly recommended) or handling and supporting baby in the bath. We ended up opting for a mat with a seat, as the mat was non-slip. However after having the freedom of movement in his Shnuggle, the seat didn’t last long and we moved to just sat on the mat. At 12 months we upgraded to a normal bath and confidence soon built.

Baby skin and bathing

I read somewhere that there is no need to wash baby in anything more than water initially. A top-to-tail body wash (not in an actual bath) should use cool boiled water and cotton wool (we used cotton wool pads). For the first few weeks after birth, we would use this method to wash the face and around the belly button (both before and after the umbilical cord stump falls off), before putting baby into the bath.

When it actually came to adding soap to our bath routine, we did this from about 6 weeks, our go-to products were the Childs Farm range, in particular the sensitive skin products. We still use these products to this day!

And when it came to bubble bath, we introduced this at 6 months – a very entertaining experience seeing the intrigue on your little one’s face!

The Afterbath

Once baby is bathed, a nice snuggly hooded towel would be waiting – warmed on the radiator during the colder months.

Although baby did not experience severe skin issues, we have encountered baby acne, milk spots and some inflammation in the joint creases, especially elbows. So from time to time we have made a gentle moisturiser (again Childs Farm being a preference) or Oilatum emoilant.

Once baby is dry then the bedtime routine commences …snuggling up in dressing gown or pyjamas, with a book or two ❤

Bathtime need not be something to get nervous about. It has been a part of our bedtime routine from a few months old and nowadays we revert to bathing every other day to avoid the skin drying out too much.

Have a splashing time with your baby!!!