Soap

With soap, as with a lot of things for kids, less is more, especially when they are babies. Babies rarely get dirty enough that they need soap to get clean; clean water is usually all they need. All baby soaps do is make babies smell clean because they are so good at advertising and marketing what a clean baby smells like. No matter how “gentle” or “natural” a baby soap markets itself as, in order for it to be a soap, it needs to collect dirt off the skin by way of taking natural oils away from the skin. These natural oils are meant to help hydrate and protect the skin. Babies’ natural oils should not be washed away if we can help it, especially in the first few months when the skin is just trying to figure everything out. Oftentimes, I will see a baby with the beginnings of baby eczema, and we can almost entirely reverse the process by just stopping the use of soap for bath time. Just bathe babies when they are stinky with regular water for the first few months. Then when they are 4-6 months old (when they start solid foods and can really get dirty and messy), baby soap can be used. But even better is old-school Dove soap, which always does the best at protecting and hydrating skin for both babies and adults in dermatologic (skin) studies year after year. Even then, bathing more than 2 times a week with soap is not necessary. If you need to bathe every day for regularity and scheduling reasons, just use lukewarm water, no soaps or bubble baths to help keep little Johnny’s skin clean and full of its natural protective oils.