Diaper Rash Cream Or Lack Thereof

I'm sticking with the toxicity theme from last week.  When Alison was just a few weeks old, she started getting some diaper rash and we did what we were told by everyone to do: use Desitin.  It works, what a great product!  EXCEPT if you're using cloth diapers. 

It turns out Desitin, or any diaper cream that contains cod liver oils, can ruin cloth diapers.  The oil sticks to the cloth, staining it and repelling liquids, instead of allowing the diaper to do its job and absorb them.  We found this out the hard way.

What's more, unless you're shopping at Whole Foods, every single diaper cream in the baby section of a normal grocery store contains something that doesn't mesh well with cloth diapers.  So what are cloth diaper users to do?

Check out this site, which rates various brands of diaper creams based on their compatibility with cloth diapers:

http://www.pinstripesandpolkadots.com/diaperrashcreams.htm

I tried California Baby Diaper Rash Cream and straight up coconut oil.  The California Baby brand smells awesome, but it didn't do much for Alison and at $11-$16 for less than 3 oz, it's safe to say it was not worth the price.  The coconut oil didn't seem to work either.  I was about to try zinc oxide, which I'd heard good things about, when I went a completely different route entirely and found the solution. 

For $2.44, I bought half a yard of microfleece from a fabric store.  I cut it into strips and lined each diaper with a new strip each diaper change.  The fleece did an awesome job of wicking moisture into the diaper and suddenly, the diaper rash disappeared.  No cream needed, no need to continually buy overpriced products.  I just wash the fleece with my diapers and enjoy a generally rash-free baby!