Pregnancy: Newborn: How do I bathe my baby?

Easy as pie. They'll show you in the hospital. Just run the water so your elbow is comfortable in it. They say that it should be body temperature but nah. Slightly warm or cold for your elbow is fine, and for some babies, preferable. My baby likes warm baths and screams if you try to give her body temperature water. We have a generic oval shaped baby bath second hand, and it fits on her secondhand moses basket stand. Stands for baths can be quite expensive, so it's useful to know that.

You support your baby's head with one hand and wash your baby with the other. I think having a baby sponge and a wash mitt is very useful. The baby sponge is much better, and you can use it on her face, and you can't do that with the wash mitt. But the wash mitt is useful for her back. You can put it on the hand that you're holding her up with.

You don't need to use baby oil every single time. Every other time is fine, it's just to moisturize her.

Cradle Cap, also known as what the hell is this? Cradle cap looks like this. It can look awful but it's nothing to worry about.

This is cradle cap. All it means is that you aren't scrubbing hard enough when you wash her hair. You can be firmer than you think. Just start scrubbing a bit harder. You don't need specially formulated shampoo unless it gets worse and worse. It is a baby equivalent of dandruff, and it's nothing to worry about, especially not at this stage. It doesn't hurt them. Try rubbing a little baby oil on the cradle cap. It can work wonders.

Some babies don't like bathing in the evenings. Mine doesn't. She didn't like the bath at all at first, she would scream from the second she got in to the second she got out, so I use it as a wakey time ritual. You DON'T have to bathe her every day and you DON'T have to top and tail her. I think 3x a week is fine, and baby oil 2x is good.

The seats so (s)he can get in the adult bath last about as long as a baby bath anyway, so probably best to get one or the other. How are your knees? If you have any knee trouble or trouble getting up and down, a bath seat is probably not for you, you'll want a baby bath and a stand.

You only need to wash your baby with plain warm water for the first month or so, then you can start using bubble baths and so on. Change only one thing at a time, so if you're adding baby bath to her bath, don't change your fabric softener or anything, and then if (s)he gets a rash you'll know what it is. My baby came up with a rash when we put infacare in the bath with her.