Most of us spend the majority of our lives worrying about ourselves. We spend hours thinking about how we look in a particular outfit or how we would look if we could just drop a pound or two or what lotion we need to buy to cure that pesky patch of dry skin behind your left ear. And then you have a baby and that worrying gets completely redirected. Suddenly, you don’t notice that patch of dry skin behind your ear anymore, but you notice every minute change in your babies body.

Most new parents could develop the Plague and wouldn’t even notice it if their baby happen to come down with the sniffles the same day. That’s why so many parents overact to diaper rash. The red and fearsome looking rash can cover a wide swath of your babies body and, in reality, it looks much worse than it really is. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t cure it right away. Let’s take a closer look at diaper rash and what we are doing to cause it.

The number of causes of diaper rash are as far ranging as any ailment out there. It is distinctly possible that the cause of your individual child’s diaper rash might not even be on this list. Every child reacts to food and to moisture differently, but let’s take a look at some of the most common causes.

The most common cause for diaper rash is too much acid in the foods that baby eats. Tomatoes are a main culprit of this. They can cause a rash over most of baby’s body if ingested. A good rule of thumb is that if there is a food that causes you to break out in a rash, don’t feed them to your baby until they are old enough to communicate with you about how they make them feel.

Any significant change in your baby’s diet can cause diaper rash. If you have your young one on a particular diet and you decide to change it or you decide to introduce them to a few food for the firs time, don’t be surprised if they get a case of diaper rash. It isn’t that they are allergic to that new food, it is the sudden change in the type of food that caused the reaction.

The most obvious cause of diaper rash are the diapers themselves. With cloth diapers, they must be changed from your baby as soon as they are wet. Cloth diapers do not have the ability to absorb urine and lock it away like disposable diapers do, so when your baby wets, the liquid is kept close to their skin and it can easily irritate it.

If you use cloth diapers, diaper rash is simply a demon you are going to have to face since you can’t monitor when your baby wets their diaper every time, especially during the night.

Even disposable diapers can cause diaper rash if the ones you use are too tight to the baby’s body. It is a combination of the skin not being able to breathe and the liquid not having enough time to be locked away from the skin before it irritates it. Try using the next size diapers up if you are having diaper rash problems with disposable diapers.

Finally, baby wipes can actually cause diaper rash, even if they claim to prevent it. Some baby wipes now say they are for sensitive skin. If you think your wipes are the problem, switch to one of these brands and see if that helps at all.