Bath time with baby is great.
It helps to establish a bedtime routine and promotes bonding between parent and child; not to mention there’s nothing lovelier than the smell of your freshly-bathed little one.
But there’s no need at all to be washing baby every single night. In fact, it could be harmful.
The accepted wisdom across the board seems to be that two to three times a week is plenty.
Over-bathing can bring babies out in a rash as for many their skin is too sensitive for some of the chemicals in common body washes, soaps and lotions.
Even washing with hypoallergenic products strips away the natural oils from their skin so it’s worth bathing them less if rashes become an issue.
Hard water can also be troublesome for skin. The tap water in many parts of Ireland is hard, meaning it’s naturally been filtered through chalk and limestone and some of the minerals have dissolved into it.
This too can cause rashes, so less frequent bathing will help.
As well as rashes, over-bathing baby could lead to them developing allergies in the future.
Every parent gets a little paranoid about exposing they children to germs but a little dirt is actually a good thing.
“Because their immune systems are still maturing, they seem to benefit from being around viruses, bacteria, and dirt,” Dr Michael Welch, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’s section on allergy and immunology, told Romper.
It goes without saying that if your baby is sick or has had a particularly nasty runs of nappies, you might want to wash him or her a little more than usual.
