A Healthy Choice: Natural Baby Skin Care Products

Although synthetic baby skin care products are often less expensive, natural baby skin care products are much more healthy for the baby in the long run, causing less skin issues like eczema and cradle cap, which are seen when using synthetic products. The reason for this is that synthetic products use man-made chemicals to produce the results that are seen on the skin. Often the products have a lot of fragrances in them that are not natural and tend to have a lot of alcohol in them which actually dries out the skin rather than moisturizing it. In addition, these synthetic products usually contain petroleum as the ingredient to 'soften' the skin. Rather than doing so, the petroleum sits on top of the skin which makes it feel soft to the touch, but does nothing to nourish the baby's skin underneath.

How to Choose

When looking at the ingredients on natural baby care products, parents should look for easily recognizable ingredients rather than the hard to pronounce names of synthetic ingredients. These natural baby skin care products should have natural ingredients such as beeswax or vitamin E as the top ingredients on the bottle or jar. This tells the parents that these ingredients are indeed those main ingredients in the product, rather than their synthetic counterparts. Because natural ingredients need to have some sort of preservative in it in order to reduce the risk of bacteria or fungus forming in the product, parents should check to see if it is a milder preservative, and there should not be more than two in the product, as more than that is overkill in most cases.

There are some other ingredients that are often found in natural baby skin care products. One of these is aloe, which is soothing to the baby's skin. Another ingredient that is commonly found and great for an infant's skin is Shea butter. Parents need to consider what types of lotions and oils that they want to put on their own skin and which ones feel the best when considering what to put on their baby's skin. This usually means spending a little more money to find natural baby skin care products as well as shampoos, diaper rash ointment, and powders that are made of all natural ingredients. However, it should make the parents feel better that they are doing the best thing for their newborn child by only putting ingredients that nature has provided on their skin, helping to give it nutrients and protection from day one.