Thursday, December 17, 2009

Diapers and baby's skin

Most cloth diapers are made of 100 percent natural soft, absorbent cotton and are gentle on baby’s skin. Cotton is a breathable material, allowing fresh air to freely circulate, cooling and preventing diaper rash. Cotton is kinder and more comfortable to your baby’s skin than paper or stiff plastic and contains no irritating perfumes or chemicals. Washable stay-dry fleece liners keep moisture away from a baby’s skin.


The interior of single-use disposable diapers don't breathe well and therefore can be a much higher temperature. Because the gel in disposables is so absorbant parents tend to change single-use disposable diapers less often than cloth diapers, increasing the risk of diaper rash, since heat and moisture provide an excellent medium for bacterial growth. (Ever seen one blow up in the pool? The absorbent chemical in disposable diapers, sodium polyacrylate gel, absorbs 100 times its weight in liquid!) Babies diapered in disposable diapers are also exposed to far too many questionable chemicals contained in the disposable diapers. Newborn skin has an underdeveloped outer layer, and chemicals are more readily absorbed through the skin and into the fat cells than in adults. Studies have shown that when these chemicals become wet, they become even more absorbent and pull moisture from the baby’s body, thereby diminishing the normal defenses of the skin.

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