How NOT to treat cradle cap

All of my babies have had cradle cap. It started with Nicky, of course, and it drove me crazy. I would scratch and wash and scratch and wash. I just needed to get those nasty flakes off his precious baby scalp. I used a cradle cap treatment on him (I don't remember the name of the product, but it had Winnie the Pooh on it, so now whenever I see Pooh Bear, I find the nearest child and start scratching its scalp), but it didn't really help. It just made his hair sticky.

When Daisy started getting cradle cap, I decided to just leave it alone. That was much better. Even though the flakes were there, they weren't actively flaking... if that makes sense. I coached myself through those months by slowly repeating, "Leave it alone. Don't touch! Leave it alone. Don't touch."

Daisy was significantly less gross than Nicky was.

But now there's Zoe... and her beautiful, soft hair is infiltrated with cradle cap. I told myself, "Just this once!"

And I scratched some of it off.

And by golly, that got the ball rolling.

Because once you've scratched off a flake, they become ten times more noticeable, and argh! It's not pretty!

I recalled our first pediatrician telling me to use Vaseline on Nicky's cradle cap, a remedy I never ended up trying. So I decided to give it a test run on Zoe.

I lathered it on her scalp until she looked like this:



Then I let her hang out for 15 minutes while the flakes absorbed the Vaseline.

Then I gave her a bath.



And it was during that bath that I remembered how I never felt good about any of the advice that our first pediatrician gave us and how I stopped taking my kids to him because he was kind of creepy.

So, of course, the Vaseline didn't wash out after three rounds of shampoo (duh!) and three additional rounds of dish soap (double duh!), and I was left shaking my fist at that darn tootin' pediatrician!

After spending a bazillion hours washing and combing Zoe's hair, she looked like this:



So today's lesson: Don't put Vaseline in your baby's hair.

Just don't.

And if your baby has cradle cap?

Leave it alone! For the love of Pete! Leave it alone!