Olive Oil, Cocoa Butter, Burt's Bees

So, we have been using olive oil and cocoa butter as a moisturizer for the last few days. The olive oil has helped a lot with cradle cap, but none of these things was a very long lasting moisturizer, but what we were using before, Vanicream, seemed to be irritating him. We're still putting Vaseline on after baths, but putting it on all the time makes a big mess. The olive oil made a small mess yesterday when Ben kicked the bottle over. I got a small bottle from Rite Aid that says sweet oil emollient. I have read though that extra virgin olive oil is better.

The cocoa butter seemed to be just as good at moisturizing if not better than the Method Baby lotion that we tried on one of Ben's legs over the weekend. We washed his hair in their shampoo too, and though the shampoo didn't seem to be extremely irritating, it did seem to dry out his head. We probably should have put olive oil on afterward, but we wanted to see what would happen if we just tried the shampoo alone.

I had bought some Burt's Bees products at the drug store the other day. I didn't try them right away, however, because I wanted to call his allergist to see if coconut would likely cause allergy problems since he is allergic to peanuts and cashews. Some people consider coconut to be a nut; others consider it to be a fruit.

Today, though, we got desperate. I had been putting olive oil and cocoa butter on all morning, but when Ben took Jamie out for a little while, in the car on the way back, Ben had removed his cotton gloves and had started scratching his neck until it bled. The allergist called back this morning and said that coconut would probably be okay. So I put on Burt's Bee's Thoroughly Therapeutic with honey and orange. I had wanted to try Burt's Bee's before, but some of their products contain nut oils or wheat, so, if you have food allergies, you have to read their labels carefully.

Burt's Bee's lotion made Ben's skin feel silky smooth. I'm not sure if it also made it a little red, but we had to do something to try and moisturize his skin so he would stop scratching. This product does have a rather strong fragrance. While we are trying to use fragrance free products, I felt that we should try this lotion. Aside from the back of head ( where he likes to scratch and seems to sometimes just do it as a reflex, Ben is not scratching now. I hope that this continues through the night. Ben is also rolling over a lot and reaching for different objects including toys, lotions and Maggie the dog.