As you’re watching your premature baby grow day by day inside the NICU --incubator with all the equipment around their faces, bellies, arms, and legs -- one of the most healing things you can do is to nurture their spirit by attending to their largest organ—their skin.
The skin is our first defense against what the world throws at us. It protects us against microbes, chemicals, and UV rays, informs us about our world, and regulates our body temperature. To manage these important jobs, our skin needs to be thick enough, well-hydrated, and well-functioning.
Skincare products made with pure, nutritive ingredients provide a healing foundation for protecting your premature baby's skin and supporting their growth.
But newborn skin is much thinner than adult skin and will take another year to fully mature
Preemies who are born extremely early have such under-developed skin, it isn’t yet the protective barrier your baby needs.
Consequently, it is highly permeable to anything you put on it. Preemie skin is so permeable and vulnerable, it leaves still-trying-to-grow babies at greater risk for toxicity and chemical challenges.
Delicate preemie skin—even when it’s so premature it’s nearly paper-thin—can carry with it the history of needle pricks, IVs, and the scars they leave.
These small scars can grow as your baby grows. They can be uncomfortable. Every needle prick or wound creates an opportunity for bacteria to enter and cause infection or irritation.
If your little one is extremely preterm, you may have to wait until their skin has developed enough that they can be touched. But ask the awesome NICU nurses what you can do for your baby and they’ll probably tell you about Therapeutic Touch (TT).
Here’s how you do it:
Lightly touch your baby’s head and feet while applying a gentle pressure to help them feel quietly contained.
So simple! Yet, it's so effective, TT is being used in NICUs throughout the country. Premature babies who were held this way:
- Lowered their breathing and heart rates
- Slept better
- Improved their coordination for breathing, sucking, and swallowing
- Increased their ability to engage with their environment
Once your baby has grown enough to manage the touch of skincare products, using safe, organic lotions, gels, and creams (free of synthetic fragrances and harsh chemicals) add hydration, help balance their skin to its healthiest pH (which should be slightly acidic, about 5.5) and enhance its protective barrier.
Combine these many benefits to the most important benefit of all—the soothing comfort of your touch, your words, and your scent.
Skincare Know-How
Impaired skin is dehydrated, rashy, raw, red, or has sores or blisters. It is not only uncomfortable, it exposes your baby to infection that can affect their health. To help their new skin grow best, skincare products need to be gentle and health-promoting.
But commercial products (even when they’re labeled “natural” or “for baby”) can be made of toxic harsh chemicals that maintain the scent, stability, color, fluidity, absorption, and other properties. Each of those chemicals can find easy access through new and porous skin to your preemie’s endocrine, digestive, nervous, or respiratory system. And every chemical can potentially cause a host of issues—some visible and some invisible—in tiny babies.
Unfortunately, many products used in healthcare facilities are full of chemicals that may be effective but also introduce toxins or disrupt the healthy pH level of your newborn’s skin, and could lower its ability to protect.
You can counteract that by bringing your own hospital-approved skincare products
Even as you go through your appointments and spend time in the NICU, you can mention to care providers and hospital staff that your preference is to use only organic, natural products on your baby (and yourself!). Be sure to list this on your baby's care plan, just to be sure everyone knows.
To prevent exposure to chemicals in the hospital’s commercial skincare products, just bring your own. BEB Organic can provide any documentation needed to show to medical staff if you are in a hospital that isn't already using our products. Here are some of the items your baby might need:
- body wash
- moisturizing oils for scalp and skin (especially for touch therapy)
- diaper balm
- lotion
Sometimes parents of premature babies and newborns are told not to use products on their baby’s still-growing skin. That advice makes sense if the skincare products are full of chemicals, fragrances, dyes, etc., or if their skin simply can't tolerate skincare yet.
But products made of organic, healthy ingredients can actually feed your baby’s skin and body as they are absorbed. And that’s why we created our BEB Organic skincare line.
Common Baby Skin Issues
Even though newborns and preemies come from a water environment, their skin is dryer at birth than it will be after a bit of growth and development. Our BEB Silky Cream moisturizes with pure food-grade oils and naturally derived ingredients that help your baby’s skin adapt to the air environment while imbuing your little one with gentle, uplifting aromas that soothe and reduce the stress that can inhibit good growth.
All newborns get some kind of rash in the first couple of months as they adjust to their new world, and 30% of them break out in baby acne. Premature babies are even more susceptible to the baby acne that can lead to infection, irritation, and inflammation. BEB Soothing Serum (formerly Healing Gel) helps reduce or eliminate the symptoms that make your little one miserable and could cause skin scarring.
Our BEB Diaper Balm is soothing but protective and strengthens the skin’s defensive ability—especially in the bacteria-rich diaper area. When inflammation, redness, and pain make your baby miserable and expose them to a risk of infection, our rich balm made with organic ingredients helps reduce inflammation and soothe irritation, all the while helping strengthen your preemie’s innate defenses. Plus, the zinc in BEB Diaper Balm creates a wall of protection between wet diapers and sensitive skin.
Protect your baby by choosing truly natural products that soothe and heal.
Choosing the purest skincare products you can find is protective parenting.
Tiny preemies are working overtime to grow, to catch up, and to go home. Our BEB Organic ingredients support that growth instead of assaulting your preemie's brand-new immune system that’s still low on defenses and vulnerable to everything.
When your newborn or premature baby's skin is upset, that’s when it needs the gentlest, most restorative care from naturally sourced products—not chemically-laden ones that can irritate, clog pores, and upset internal systems.
The delightful aromas of our BEB Organic products come from Mother Nature, not the chemical factory. Rose, cucumber, geranium, coconut, myrrh, orange, and tangerine make our products (and your baby!) smell as good as they feel.
Your little one will smell deliciously sweet, even while their skin and hair are strengthened by hydrating and cleansing products chock-full of ingredients that promote growth.
At BEB Organic, healthy babies are the reason we search the world for the best fruits, flowers, and plants to create luxurious skincare overflowing with goodness—and why so many hospitals include our products in the gift bag new parents take home.
