Home remedies · Children & infants
No home remedy here replaces treatment, and none is talked down. What has done good for generations does good — even if no one ever measured it. Where something is well studied, it says so. Where it is only experience, it says that too.
Leave the nappy off as often as possible — that is the most effective part and costs nothing. At each change clean with lukewarm water only, not with wipes. On weeping areas lay on a cloth soaked in cooled strong black tea for five minutes, then let it dry well. After that a thin layer of zinc ointment. At every change, until it has healed.
Three things, each with a reason of its own. Air: the skin gets sore because it stays wet and warm; a wet horny layer swells and loses its barrier, and urine is broken down by bacteria into ammonia, which irritates the softened skin. Drying interrupts both. Black tea: its tannins cross-link proteins at the surface — the weeping spot gets a thin, denser film and weeps less. Zinc: zinc oxide lies on the skin as a film and keeps wetness off; it works as a seal outward, not as an active substance inward.
No powder — it clumps with wetness and is breathed in. No wipes on sore skin; the substances in them sting and dry further. Apply zinc ointment thinly: a thick layer has to be rubbed off at the next change, and it is exactly the rubbing that does harm. If the redness is glossy, sharply bordered and has small dots around it, it is usually a yeast — and zinc does nothing against that.
If it is no better after three days, with blisters, open areas or yellow crusts, with glossy sharply bordered redness and satellite dots, with fever, if the child will not drink or cries oddly — and always if the redness spreads beyond the nappy area.
At once: any fever in an infant under three months, a child who is apathetic or has stopped drinking, skin bleeding that does not fade under pressure, breathlessness or drawn-in ribs. A first seizure is always looked at. Refusing to drink for hours counts for more than the temperature.