When to Start Bathing a Baby

Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Liz Hood on behalf of Expert Village and right now I am talking about how to give your baby a bath. Now, in this segment I'm going over when to start giving your baby a bath and how often. Now, when you take your newborn home from the hospital or your doula or midwife leaves your home he or she is going to have a little umbilical cord stump. Now, you're not supposed to immerse them into water or pour water right over that area until after that stump falls out. So, until that stump falls out, which usually takes about three to four weeks or so, you are just going to have to give them a sponge bath. Now, newborns don't get all that dirty. The only area that really gets dirty is just their face, the little crease of their neck and their diaper area. So if you keep those areas pretty clean, anyway, you really don't need to do it more than once a week or so. Newborns have really sensitive skin so they kind of need that, their skin oil to help protect their skin from the elements. Now, once the umbilical cord does fall off you can still continue giving a bath once or twice a week and you can actually give them a real bath and once they start crawling around, like this little guy does here. He is seven and a half months and he crawls everywhere and you need to give them a bath more often because they get dirtier. Especially their hands and their knee area and the tops of their feet. Crawlers need to get a bath about once every other day. Some people do it every evening before they get their baby ready for bed as part of their night time ritual which helps the baby go to bed and go to sleep better. That works too, but you don't need to wash them that often until they are about crawling age, like this guy.

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