Thread: cradle cap still??

Ok, so izzie had cradle cap as a newborn/infant, we would do the olive oil treatments before bath time and it would help. Well, now that she has her thick hair I hadn't noticed it in a while. Until the other night when she was actually letting me comb her hair after bath time and I noticed those lovely yellow chunks building up on the comb. So after picking through her hair, sure enough, she's got that crusty yellow scales on top of her head. I don't want to do olive oil since her hairs thicker/longer and it woud be too greasy. Any other ideas for getting rid of it? I know its not harmful, but I need it gone more for my sake so that I stop picking at it

What brand of wash are you using on her hair? My recommendation is to check the ingredients in your baby wash. If there's sodium laureth sulfate, throw it away and replace it with something sulfate-free, such as Burt's Bees baby wash (which is also paraben and phthalate free). SLS is an additive in TONS of soaps, shampoos and washes to make it lather/foam, even those designed for babies. It is incredibly drying, especially if you have hard water, and overdrying your scalp can cause a overproduction of oil and sebum. Some sites will say to try dandruff shampoo, which likely will address the symptoms but do nothing about the underlying cause. And then you have to worry about getting it in her eyes. Applying oil and brushing out the scales is the tried and true, but again if her scalp is going crazy with oil/sebum production because of a drying shampoo it will just keep coming back. If you try something sulfate-free for a few weeks I'll bet you'll see a huge improvement. The only reason why I think it might be due to overdrying is that most babies get over cradle cap once they've gotten mom's hormones out of their system after birth. It's not really that common for toddlers to have cradle cap.

Since we moved to our house I've had a huge problem with dry, itchy, flaky scalp. I had to start using H&S, but it didn't do much. Once I switched to a sulfate-free shampoo my symptoms were gone in a couple weeks.

Oooh! For ONCE I find an article on exactly this topic!!!
http://www.exederm.com/seborrheic-de...treatment.html

Thanks! I've actually been wondering the same thing. Miles still has some, not a lot, but enough to notice! I'm going to change his shampoo/wash.

Thank you Lisa! That was super helpful. Ill have to check out what we've got and see if we need to switch it up.

Thank you Lisa!!!!! I checked the girls' shampoo and it was the second ingredient! Off to find something new!

I was going to respond to this post by saying that about a month ago, Maria had cradle cap again! I usually used Olive Oil but this time I used greaseless Coconut Oil and it seemed to do the trick! Maria doesn't have long hair at all, so it was quite easy to get it all the way down to her scalp!

Originally Posted by babyJtime

Thank you Lisa!!!!! I checked the girls' shampoo and it was the second ingredient! Off to find something new!

I was going to respond to this post by saying that about a month ago, Maria had cradle cap again! I usually used Olive Oil but this time I used greaseless Coconut Oil and it seemed to do the trick! Maria doesn't have long hair at all, so it was quite easy to get it all the way down to her scalp!

Delia, I'll bet you'll see an improvement in Maria's dry patches/eczema too.

Another ingredient to watch out for is cocoamido(something something something) betaine.

Thanks Lisa. I didn't even think about that. Miriam still gets something like that on her head and I never thought to check her shampoo.

Thanks for the info Lisa! Maddie still has it too and the doc said she will grow out of it but now I'm checking the Johnson's baby shampoo and how much do you want to bet it's in there?!