Let me share a little bit of my experience of how I learnt to bath my first baby boy about 20+ years ago. Since I didn’t have any idea of how to bath a baby, I took a session of training for to-be-moms offered by a hospital. So disappointedly, I only watched a nurse showing and telling what to do with a doll. It’s not a typo. Indeed, it’s a doll. No baby, no water was there in the training session at all. So the step-by-step video demo for bathing baby is much better than what I could get at that time. Eventually it’s my mother-in-law that I asked her to come to my place as my mentor.

Let’s come back to our safety tips. Here are a few things that need your special attention when bathing your newborn baby:

1. Do remember: Never leave your baby unattended in a bath tub. So prepare everything that you need to bath your baby and place them in proper place. Take caution if anything happens that would distract you or make you forget your baby. For example, I liked talking over the phone very much. Whenever my home phone rang, my first reaction was to get the phone and left everything behind. So my number one rule: no calls would be answered when bathing my baby. I would find some other time to call back. You might have different things to avoid.

2. Before starting your baby’s bath, have all bathing supplies ready and placed in the right place, including a bath tub, a facecloth, baby wash, baby cotton swabs, cotton tips, lotion, a towel, a diaper, and clothes. Getting a bath tub that you can count on should be the first thing on the list. Otherwise place a matt or a towel at the bottom of your bath tub, so your baby doesn’t slip.

3. Make sure the temperature of bathwater is right. Normally it should be lower than 120 degress. I used to test bathwater temperature with my elbow before putting my baby in it. Elbow is more sensitive than hand. Some parents might like to use a thermometer.

4. When you clean your baby’s eyes, use cotton swabs or good quality face-cloth and dip it into the water. Start from the inside corner of your baby’s eyes and wipe outward gently.

5. Apply small amount of shampoo and baby wash. Use the ones that your baby won’t get allergy and suitable for babies, not those made for adults. Make sure the shampoo won’t get into his/her eyes. In order to make sure that no shampoo get into my baby’s eyes, I used to wash his head first. Wrap my newborn baby in a towel and hold him in my arms like a football. Gently tip his head back a bit. Use a warm, wet washcloth to dampen hair. Wash hair and rinse out carefully. Just like the way you have your hair washed by a hairdresser. Make sure the shampoo rinse off thoroughly and dry with a towel.

6. Gently place your baby in the water with your hands supporting the whole body of your baby safely. Caution for holding a newborn: one hand should support his/her neck and back, the other at his/her bottom.

7. Always place a washcloth that’s wetted with warm water over baby’s stomach to keep him/her warm.

8. When you bath your baby, start from the front, and then to the back. Be sure to get in between your baby’s toes when you wash his/her legs. Get in between all the folds of the upper thighs. When wash your baby’s diaper area and remember that with a baby girl to wash from front to back so not to spread germs that may cause infections.

9. Completely rinse off your baby. Have a towel laying spread out on the bench top or floor or bed. Take the baby out of the bath tub and lay him/her on the towel and wrap him/her up snuggly. After your baby’s bath is done, dry your baby up and get him/her dressed.

10. Take special care of your baby’s umbilical cord attached. Try not to get it wet or submerge in water. To prevent infection from taking place, it is better to clean the surface area around the cord with an alcohol soaked cotton swab or cotton tip. This helps to dry up the base of your baby’s cord and clean the area.

I can remember that my two babies would cry very hard when I put them in bathwater. But after the first few baths, even they cried when I took their clothes off, they would stop crying instantly when going down the warm water. They loved bathing very much. When finished, I took them out from the water, they cried again! They seemed to protest, “I want bath !”

Related post:

How to Bath Baby Step-By-Step 

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 28th, 2006 at 12:16 am and is filed under 0-02 yrs: Baby, Cleaning, How-to Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.