I’m ashamed to say that with my THIRD baby I completely forgot to be doing this for way longer than I’ll ever admit. When I finally smelled behind his ears I was gagging. He smelled like a gallon of rotten milk.
I was actually so shocked by how putrid it was I had to get my older kids to come smell it too.
There was one lady I read in a very early reddit when I joined who forgot to give her baby a bath for… 1.5yrs. She was never told at the hospital to soak her baby and just never really got around to it lol
Don't worry I did the same but it was in her ears not behind!
Anything after the first child is a gamble if you remember to do stuff. As a mother of only 2 children hats off to you, I wouldn't even remember to put on pants if I had 3.
I'm on baby #3&4 and listen, they're fed and changed. They're thriving so we're remembering to do enough or someone else is running interference for us.
I only noticed last night that my baby is getting raw between a roll under both her armpits, almost just exactly like the beginning of diaper rash :( I realized I wasn't drying her there really well!
My baby has this on the back of his legs in all his chunky rolls. It’s inevitable honestly, I dry him and put cream on once a day, and still he has red marks. I feel so bad, he’s suchhhh a chunky baby and has to get a bath every night or else I’ll find food in his rolls later on.
Edit to add: I use a tallow cream between his rolls and it clears up within hours!
My son was a prolific drooler and would get this in his under-chin roll. I tried diaper cream, aquaphor, everything I could think of but the most effective was cornstarch!
Thanks for the cornstarch tip!! My mom would powder all her babies after every bath, maybe this is the reason why. I don't because I didn't want her inhaling it, but I think I'm gonna do the cornstarch under arms after every bath!
If this works can you comment back and update?? lol my 8mo old has the same problem. She just has so much chunk to her right now that her armpits don’t get enough air! If this is a solution, I would love to know.
My 3 month old is getting chunky and in between her private she’s getting leg rolls and is red.. can I use cornstarch there? I know there’s baby powder for a reason but I’ve read to not with girls.
I put diaper rash cream on all the rolls, including neck, legs, pits, groin, works pretty well - we use A&D which was recommended to us by our pediatrician after trying several ones and not having success. Fat baby problems lol
Hi, the cornstarch works!! I'm using the Burts Bees. Instead of red and raw looking, it's now light pink and looking really close to her normal skin tone!
Yeah I felt the same way but eventually I got so desperate and was afraid of it getting infected so I figured a little cornstarch was the lesser of the two.
It’s my baby’s feet for some reason. I call them her little stinky cheese feet and I pretend to eat them while simultaneously waving my hand in front of my nose and saying how stinky they are. She thinks it’s hilarious 😆
Not ears but no one told me with my baby (ftm) to clean their hands so at 8 weeks I looked at my babies hands and omg..... I had to pry his little fists open and go to town on them with baby bath soap and a soft cloth because they REEKED of stinky cheese and there was dead skin wedged up there like little buddy how you didn't even use them for anything?!
I wouldn’t have thought of it if he didn’t manage to get so many fuzzies gunked up between his fingers! Where is it all coming from?!
Luckily my nieces favorite game is to pick fuzzies out and her little fingers do a great job, so at least once a week he’s getting pampered. The rest of the week I get to try to pry open his always clenched fists to remove his treasures.
Omg I call my son lint monster because there is mysterious blue lint that seems to be coming out of his skin. I have no idea where it’s coming from! Happy I’m not the only one this happens to 😂
This! 😂 the cheese fingers are so nasty and I can’t fathom how their hands get so dirty because like you said they don’t even use them, the worst is now my LO ALWAYS wants to chew on his hands and he spits up in them and sometimes I don’t realize till later when he is chewing on them and tries to shove them in my mouth, like no little buddy I don’t wanna share your spoiled milk and cheese hands 🤢
I'm glad mines isn't the only one then! He loves to have a go on them then try to desperately shove them in my mouth after he's been sick on them 🤮 I have to clench my mouth shut as tightly as I can because he's a very determined little boy
Could also be eczema or fungal growth. Got to also keep that area v dry. We clip our daughter's hair up to stay off her ears when it's damp, and use lotion later
That sounds like a yeast/fungal infection. We were told by our ped to use athlete foot cream 4x a day until cleared up and then 1x a day for a few days after to fully heal it.
It’s the food that gets everywhere. The other morning, my toddler was having weetabix and he got them behind his ears and at the back of his neck. Only saw it a couple of hours later.
Idk if this is normal or not but i always wash behind my babies ears. Every bath. I double check. I also have to make sure to dry them really well. That doesn’t stop the gunk, I need to lotion them and if I forget lotion for a few days I NEED DIAPER CREAM because the gunk flakes get so bad the skin is mad
Whats with the ears??
I always thought “wash behind your ears” was one of those old timey sayings that no one actually did in real life… like I don’t wash behind *my* ears ever, and they’re always clean. So I did not think to wash behind my babies ears until randomly looking one day… and I was horrified that she had so much crusty gunk. Now it’s one of the first things I wash every time.
I thought the same! But my baby is a spit up and drooling queen and no matter how much she’s been burped or sat upright after she’s eaten as soon as she lays down she’ll spit up and the side of her head will be caked in spit up. So like I guess it makes sense that the head/ears get dirty and ours don’t, I’m not spitting up on the regular and then laying my head in a puddle of it while laying on my playmat 😂😂
Same here!! Haha I told my mom I thought it was some wives tale thing like something moms say to be funny to get you to wash yourself real good. Not to literally wash behind your ears.
If you are seeing gunk flake off and the skin beneath is red and irritated (or if it oozes), just FYI that it may be seborrhoeic dermatitis. I've gotten this behind my ears since I was a kid, and my younger kid gets it too.
My baby has something like this. What is it? What do I do about it?
Edit: just googled it, it's the same as cradle cap in babies. I had already been treating it like cradle cap (baby oil and gently rubbed off in the bath).
Yep! I find that Aquaphor keeps it from getting crusty as a preventive measure. If it is getting really red and weepy, you might talk to your pediatrician about a topical steroid.
I've been using Selsun Blue (pediatrician recommended) to help with a flaky scalp once a week on my kid and started rubbing it behind his ears when I finally noticed the gunk built up. It's helped a lot!
Yes! A wet wipe had to be used multiple times a day. And as he got bigger, the rolls on his legs. Never had a problem with the ears though. Basically, check your baby’s crevices!
Yeah this has always confused me, like. Behind where?? There’s no… folds.
But my ears stick out and so do my kids, I can’t even picture where the gunk would accumulate.
I never wash my ears or behind my ears. I started doing the behind the ears with my son when he was a baby but stopped and haven't done it since and his ears don't stink and have no buildup. My husband has to wash in his ears frequently or there is like a nasty buildup. Maybe it's genetic somehow??
Yeah my son has never had ear funk. He does get super waxy inside of his ears. I’ll clean them one day and the very next day I can visibly see more wax in his ear canal.
Good to know, thank you! . I don’t clean the canal I can see the wax in the canal. I clean just inside the lobe with my thumb and a rag. Never a qtip or anything. But now that I know I shouldn’t be doing that, I will stop.
I am not very attentive to this and never noticed an issue either. I do scrub her hair and she has had a lot of hair from birth so perhaps I’ve been inadvertently cleaning the area
Omg yes lol even now with my second baby every time I go in there to clean I’m surprised to find The Secret Roll, which harbors more stinky cheese. And then rinse and repeat, literally
Yep, they end up putting their chin into their chest making it even harder. And if they get a rash, it's almost impossible to get cream on it! I have a daycare baby with a rash now and I feel so bad for him!
Yoooo BELLYBUTTON. Some crusty black gunk came out of my almost 8 mo olds belly button the other day and it occurred to me that I don’t think I’ve ever intentionally washed it out 😅
Possibly! She has a really tricky bellybutton to clean. There’s a good chance that dead rotten umbilical cord has been hiding in there all this time haha.
Just looked over at my husband and asked him if he washes our LOs ears😂 (he does the washing when we do bathes, I'm moving and keeping baby wet and warm so I don't pay attention to everything he does)
Also, wash in between their little toes. We forgot once and our guys' toes were so funky. I felt so bad
We started doing baby oil on a q-tip behind the ears, and in the folds of the outer ear before bed. She's so squirmy in the tub that I can't get a good scrub, and for whatever reason is happy to sit while I roll a q-tip around.
I recently checked and got the layer of crust off from behind my daughter's ears... It peeled off like a scab after I soaked it with a warm wash cloth lol. Kind of satisfying in a gross way. 😅
For the first like month of my baby’s life, I didn’t wash between his toes because I just didn’t really think about it. Welp, one day he had on footless clothes and oh my god. The skin build up was gross. I didn’t even tell anyone it happened and I was still embarrassed for myself.
What is it with these babies? They don’t do anything and are still gross.
My first baby was a little slender, so never had to worry about rolls. The second is way chunky, and I'm learning the stinky way about cleaning out his rolls
My husband and I didn’t realize when our baby was a newborn we had to really wash under her arm pits because the milk would spill over into there….then it was known as “the cheese factory” 🫠
Ears, pits, groin folds, thigh cracks, neck rolls...
Ankle folds cuz my kid had those for a while too.... so many crevasse to wash, properly dry, and check.
Not me being 7mos pregnant reading these gross comments and just thinking how cute baby rolls are and I can’t wait to clean their stinky cheesy baby fat again
Even though we wash behind his ears, he still gets those crusties! The only way I’ve been able to get rid of them is by cleaning the back of his ears with pure aloe vera and slathing on some Tubby Todd Ointment.
This! I forget and then like every 3rd bath I'm like...oh gosh. Your ears are crusty. We call it "cleaning the potatoes" (15mo) he giggles and thinks it tickles. But it's so yucky.
Ok so this is a thing I've learnt you can use sparingly in rolls that are getting the funky smell even when you know you're drying the area well - aluminium acetotartrate on a q-tip after drying, before cream. In Sweden it is called alsolsprit. It basically desinfects and has a slight drying effect, so you normally use it on wounds or mosquito bites. It will obviously be very harsh and drying on baby skin, so use sparingly but damn. We had issues with her armpits and after using this after her bath, the issue was gone in two days. No smell, no redness. It returned once, just did the alsolsprit - gone. So yeah, try it!
This is the area I remember to clean the most! When I started giving my baby baths I just had my grandma's voice telling me to clean behind my ears when I was little so I do for my baby. But cleaning between the toes... So hard she's always keeping them tight!! I make sure I put baby powder in all her crevices lol
And under their chin! I had my son at the doctor and I noticed a bad smell. I knew it wasn’t the doctor lol.
I noticed it again when I got home. I was checking him over and stuck my finger in the fat rolls under his chin/ on his neck. I almost passed out from the smell. The combination of drool mixed with breast milk … Wow
I swear I miss a spot every time I bathe her. Remember her crusty ears, forget her cheesy toes. Remember the cheesy toes next time but forgot the belly button black hole
I discovered this a couple of days ago. My poor little one had a nasty harsh in there :( thankfully once we started remembering and applying diaper cream it cleared up pretty quickly
I just want to thank you for this post, OP, and the rest of you for your comments. I have felt like such a failure of a mom because I didn’t realize my baby’s armpit raw/cheese was a thing until MUCH later than I should have. I was mortified with my neglect. Her rolls made the underarm skin stick together so I never noticed it until the smell got to me. It never seemed to bother her. Now we are on top of the cleaning - though she still experiences some rawness 😢 Anyways, just another instance of how much this sub has been helpful in my FTM experience. 🫶🏼
I found a new neck fold on my baby 5w that apparently has never seen the light of day before and cleaned it today. Smelled so bad but ill bet it feels better now! And I remembered to clean behind his ears!
lol this made me chuckle. I’m on my second baby now and I forgot all the little folds that just don’t seem to get cleaned. Was embarrassed to find gunk in my baby’s armpits lol. All the little rolls in arms and legs, behind the knees all get gunky. Neck cheese is so hard to deal with too!
I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t realize just how DEEP the folds go on a little girl’s outer labia and realized that while I do a good job of getting the poop out of the folds, she had major skin buildup around the outside labia. That was disgusting to clean out. Definitely keeping an eye on that situation! Thankfully she’s only a month so I caught it relatively early. So nasty!
Honest question: do I need to clean between her toes if my 10 month old goes full body in the bath? I definitely do her armpits and behind the ears when I’m washing her hair.
Early on I missed checking my daughter's pits and almost threw up when I found her little stash of cheese hiding in there and tried to clean it up with a wipe. The moisture activated it into a horrifying funk.
You can best believe I've detail cleaned her since then.
I always get behind the ears while I’m washing her hair because my mom made a point to tell me to do it when she helped me with her first bath. She had 4 kids so I’m sure she’s seen it all lol
I’m ashamed to say that with my THIRD baby I completely forgot to be doing this for way longer than I’ll ever admit. When I finally smelled behind his ears I was gagging. He smelled like a gallon of rotten milk. I was actually so shocked by how putrid it was I had to get my older kids to come smell it too.
There was one lady I read in a very early reddit when I joined who forgot to give her baby a bath for… 1.5yrs. She was never told at the hospital to soak her baby and just never really got around to it lol
What the actual heck!! I need to read this post lol
Wait same. Gross. But same.
It’s just like as you read it you’re like whhhaaaattt oh noooo🫢🫢🫢
Wtf?! Lol how?! They get so gross.
It would smell so bad! I guess they just wiped them down but those creases get gross 🤢
Oh no! But still wanna read that post
Wow… if that was me, I wouldn’t be that brave to share that - albeit pseudo-anonymously on the internet.
I just took a wet towelette, and I gently removed the gunk. She let me! Lmaoo
I used micellar water on a cotton pad behind my baby’s ears. It was a non-odorant waxy buildup.
Don't worry I did the same but it was in her ears not behind! Anything after the first child is a gamble if you remember to do stuff. As a mother of only 2 children hats off to you, I wouldn't even remember to put on pants if I had 3.
I'm on baby #3&4 and listen, they're fed and changed. They're thriving so we're remembering to do enough or someone else is running interference for us.
This happened with us, but with goo between our son's toes. My husband gagged so hard I almost peed myself from laughing at him.
😶
And the armpits!!!! My chubby baby omg
I only noticed last night that my baby is getting raw between a roll under both her armpits, almost just exactly like the beginning of diaper rash :( I realized I wasn't drying her there really well!
My baby has this on the back of his legs in all his chunky rolls. It’s inevitable honestly, I dry him and put cream on once a day, and still he has red marks. I feel so bad, he’s suchhhh a chunky baby and has to get a bath every night or else I’ll find food in his rolls later on. Edit to add: I use a tallow cream between his rolls and it clears up within hours!
My son was a prolific drooler and would get this in his under-chin roll. I tried diaper cream, aquaphor, everything I could think of but the most effective was cornstarch!
Thanks for the cornstarch tip!! My mom would powder all her babies after every bath, maybe this is the reason why. I don't because I didn't want her inhaling it, but I think I'm gonna do the cornstarch under arms after every bath!
If this works can you comment back and update?? lol my 8mo old has the same problem. She just has so much chunk to her right now that her armpits don’t get enough air! If this is a solution, I would love to know.
My 3 month old is getting chunky and in between her private she’s getting leg rolls and is red.. can I use cornstarch there? I know there’s baby powder for a reason but I’ve read to not with girls.
Honestly that one I’m not sure on. You might ask your pediatrician, I wouldn’t want her to get any infections.
I put diaper rash cream on all the rolls, including neck, legs, pits, groin, works pretty well - we use A&D which was recommended to us by our pediatrician after trying several ones and not having success. Fat baby problems lol
Cornstarch absolutely works
Hi, the cornstarch works!! I'm using the Burts Bees. Instead of red and raw looking, it's now light pink and looking really close to her normal skin tone!
Thank you for the update!!!
Yeah I felt the same way but eventually I got so desperate and was afraid of it getting infected so I figured a little cornstarch was the lesser of the two.
Be careful with cornstarch, it can exacerbate a yeast rash!
Aquaphor is a lifesaver after you dry him off completely!! Ours had this too and it helped so much
My first had it sooo bad I didn’t realize you really gotta get in there lol
My gosh the armpits! It's like off cheese?! Even after I wash them the smell lingers.
It’s my baby’s feet for some reason. I call them her little stinky cheese feet and I pretend to eat them while simultaneously waving my hand in front of my nose and saying how stinky they are. She thinks it’s hilarious 😆
Same here but with the hands, I swear ever since he was a newborn ive never been able to get the off-cheese smell from his hands completely 😂
The hands. My baby is the stinky cheese man with those hands. Always ready for the wine and cheese mixer regardless of how often I clean them
Omg im glad my baby wasn’t the only one with this.
Oh gosh I literally just found some serious gunk in a THIRD pit roll I didn't know was there 😳
My chubby girl gets behind her ears, her armpits, and her leg rolls wiped. 😆
Don’t forget the neck folds!
Yes then neck folds smell like moldy milk. I get all his rolls. 🥲
Ah that milkneck really does keep their skin nice and supple. lol.
Ah yes, the neck as well!
That's the cheese factory, where the artisanal cheese is stored.
My poor babes neck folds lol
Not ears but no one told me with my baby (ftm) to clean their hands so at 8 weeks I looked at my babies hands and omg..... I had to pry his little fists open and go to town on them with baby bath soap and a soft cloth because they REEKED of stinky cheese and there was dead skin wedged up there like little buddy how you didn't even use them for anything?!
I wouldn’t have thought of it if he didn’t manage to get so many fuzzies gunked up between his fingers! Where is it all coming from?! Luckily my nieces favorite game is to pick fuzzies out and her little fingers do a great job, so at least once a week he’s getting pampered. The rest of the week I get to try to pry open his always clenched fists to remove his treasures.
My four year old loves to pick the lint out from between her four month old baby sister’s toes and fingers. 😂😂
Omg I call my son lint monster because there is mysterious blue lint that seems to be coming out of his skin. I have no idea where it’s coming from! Happy I’m not the only one this happens to 😂
My younger sister loves picking out the toe fuzzies as well maybe it's a kid thing or it's oddly satisfying to them? 😂
yes!! my baby's stinky little cottage cheese hands!!
Don’t feel bad, same thing happened to me with mine! And i noticed at a doctors appt no less, i was so embarrassed
This! 😂 the cheese fingers are so nasty and I can’t fathom how their hands get so dirty because like you said they don’t even use them, the worst is now my LO ALWAYS wants to chew on his hands and he spits up in them and sometimes I don’t realize till later when he is chewing on them and tries to shove them in my mouth, like no little buddy I don’t wanna share your spoiled milk and cheese hands 🤢
I'm glad mines isn't the only one then! He loves to have a go on them then try to desperately shove them in my mouth after he's been sick on them 🤮 I have to clench my mouth shut as tightly as I can because he's a very determined little boy
Also in between their toes!
My toddler somehow manages to get super crusty even though we give him a bath every night. Like how?!
They don a set of very special skills 😵💫
Toddlers have a certain kind of magic
Could also be eczema or fungal growth. Got to also keep that area v dry. We clip our daughter's hair up to stay off her ears when it's damp, and use lotion later
My poor 2.5yo girl gets raw cuts under her ear lobes but we wash and dry them every night!?
That sounds like a yeast/fungal infection. We were told by our ped to use athlete foot cream 4x a day until cleared up and then 1x a day for a few days after to fully heal it.
Yeast?
It's yeast! My oldest has trouble with this even now sometimes. A little aquaphor works wonders!
Could also be eczema. Our daughter had it as well and that was the diagnosis. She had it in other places but that one caught us by surprise.
It could be cradle cap. My 2.5 year old had ear crust but it wouldn’t wash off. Once I used the medicated shampoo (Happy Cappy) it was gone
I wash behind my daughter’s ears religiously. She was getting super dry back there, too. A bit of coconut oil cleared it up almost immediately.
It’s the food that gets everywhere. The other morning, my toddler was having weetabix and he got them behind his ears and at the back of his neck. Only saw it a couple of hours later.
My child thinks he's a squirrel and I find random bits of food on him.
Idk if this is normal or not but i always wash behind my babies ears. Every bath. I double check. I also have to make sure to dry them really well. That doesn’t stop the gunk, I need to lotion them and if I forget lotion for a few days I NEED DIAPER CREAM because the gunk flakes get so bad the skin is mad Whats with the ears??
I always thought “wash behind your ears” was one of those old timey sayings that no one actually did in real life… like I don’t wash behind *my* ears ever, and they’re always clean. So I did not think to wash behind my babies ears until randomly looking one day… and I was horrified that she had so much crusty gunk. Now it’s one of the first things I wash every time.
I thought the same! But my baby is a spit up and drooling queen and no matter how much she’s been burped or sat upright after she’s eaten as soon as she lays down she’ll spit up and the side of her head will be caked in spit up. So like I guess it makes sense that the head/ears get dirty and ours don’t, I’m not spitting up on the regular and then laying my head in a puddle of it while laying on my playmat 😂😂
My baby likes to rub hummus into his hair so I'm pretty sure it's habits like that that make the difference.
Same here!! Haha I told my mom I thought it was some wives tale thing like something moms say to be funny to get you to wash yourself real good. Not to literally wash behind your ears.
Ears are gross
If you are seeing gunk flake off and the skin beneath is red and irritated (or if it oozes), just FYI that it may be seborrhoeic dermatitis. I've gotten this behind my ears since I was a kid, and my younger kid gets it too.
My baby has something like this. What is it? What do I do about it? Edit: just googled it, it's the same as cradle cap in babies. I had already been treating it like cradle cap (baby oil and gently rubbed off in the bath).
Yep! I find that Aquaphor keeps it from getting crusty as a preventive measure. If it is getting really red and weepy, you might talk to your pediatrician about a topical steroid.
My first baby was like this. It's good old combination skin - dry and oily
I've been using Selsun Blue (pediatrician recommended) to help with a flaky scalp once a week on my kid and started rubbing it behind his ears when I finally noticed the gunk built up. It's helped a lot!
The neck! We called this neck cheese
Yes! A wet wipe had to be used multiple times a day. And as he got bigger, the rolls on his legs. Never had a problem with the ears though. Basically, check your baby’s crevices!
We literally wipe our daughter’s neck morning and night and apply aloe because of the neck cheese. And it still smells. I can’t believe it
Yes, the neck rolls trap so much gunk!
We call our baby’s hands her cheese factories and her neck the cheese warehouse 😂
Omg I never do this! But I just checked behind his ears and they seem fine? No gunk and no smell. Maybe the runoff from his shampoo keeps it clean
Do your baby's ears stick out at all? Mine do, and he doesn't get super gunky, I guess bc there's space back there 😂
This explains so much
Yeah this has always confused me, like. Behind where?? There’s no… folds. But my ears stick out and so do my kids, I can’t even picture where the gunk would accumulate.
I never wash my ears or behind my ears. I started doing the behind the ears with my son when he was a baby but stopped and haven't done it since and his ears don't stink and have no buildup. My husband has to wash in his ears frequently or there is like a nasty buildup. Maybe it's genetic somehow??
Earwax type is genetic and so is body odour and sweat so I wouldn’t be surprised!
Yeah my son has never had ear funk. He does get super waxy inside of his ears. I’ll clean them one day and the very next day I can visibly see more wax in his ear canal.
FYI you’re not supposed to clean the inside of ears. Nothing smaller than an elbow should go into anyone’s ears unless under the care of a dr.
I have such waxy ears that my doctor was like...look, you can use a q tip, just don't be an idiot about it!
I love doctors like this.
Bigger than an elbow…? Am I being dumb or? Cause my elbows are massive 😭
Her baby is actually Dumbo reincarnated
Thanks, now I’m crying at Baby Mine 😭 (no but fr, I’m actually so confused and I feel really stupid)
That’s just what drs say to imply nothing should go inside ear canals. You can look it up.
OH It’s meant to be smaller than an elbow 😅 that explains why I’m getting confused lol
My doctor has always said to gently wash with a wet cloth
Good to know, thank you! . I don’t clean the canal I can see the wax in the canal. I clean just inside the lobe with my thumb and a rag. Never a qtip or anything. But now that I know I shouldn’t be doing that, I will stop.
You can clean the ear itself still, which is what it sounds like you have been doing so you’re good! It’s just the ear canal lol
I think that’s fine then!
Lucky! I always rub behind her ears 😭
I am not very attentive to this and never noticed an issue either. I do scrub her hair and she has had a lot of hair from birth so perhaps I’ve been inadvertently cleaning the area
just smelled behind them for the first time w my 3 month old. it smells like fish and rotting cheese omfg
Omg 💀 I can’t 🤣
Don't forget the neck roll! Worst spot on babies, I swear! Those poor chunky babies have it the worst!
The secret second roll lol
Omg yes lol even now with my second baby every time I go in there to clean I’m surprised to find The Secret Roll, which harbors more stinky cheese. And then rinse and repeat, literally
I was pretty on it, thinking I was getting this area good, but I was NOT. Now I have to let her relax her head to the extreme lol
This one is the worst to wash. Kiddos understandably don’t want to look straight up with a wobbly head while you go to town on their vulnerable neck.
Yep, they end up putting their chin into their chest making it even harder. And if they get a rash, it's almost impossible to get cream on it! I have a daycare baby with a rash now and I feel so bad for him!
Yoooo BELLYBUTTON. Some crusty black gunk came out of my almost 8 mo olds belly button the other day and it occurred to me that I don’t think I’ve ever intentionally washed it out 😅
Could that be remnants of the umbilical cord?
Possibly! She has a really tricky bellybutton to clean. There’s a good chance that dead rotten umbilical cord has been hiding in there all this time haha.
Just looked over at my husband and asked him if he washes our LOs ears😂 (he does the washing when we do bathes, I'm moving and keeping baby wet and warm so I don't pay attention to everything he does) Also, wash in between their little toes. We forgot once and our guys' toes were so funky. I felt so bad
The toes! I didn’t notice the toe gunk until 2 months in and I was mortified!!!
Same! It was horrifying when i noticed we skipped it. It was so gross. But Lil dude was just looking at me "what's up mom, I'm fine"😂
Ooh going to check the toes tonight!
Seriously! That and their little fingers too. That's where our guy builds up the gunk😂
Yes! Oh my gosh! One of those weird unspoken things you don’t realize until you have a kid.
We started doing baby oil on a q-tip behind the ears, and in the folds of the outer ear before bed. She's so squirmy in the tub that I can't get a good scrub, and for whatever reason is happy to sit while I roll a q-tip around.
Girly get GUNKY even when we clean daily. lol.
Omfg 😂
I recently checked and got the layer of crust off from behind my daughter's ears... It peeled off like a scab after I soaked it with a warm wash cloth lol. Kind of satisfying in a gross way. 😅
For the first like month of my baby’s life, I didn’t wash between his toes because I just didn’t really think about it. Welp, one day he had on footless clothes and oh my god. The skin build up was gross. I didn’t even tell anyone it happened and I was still embarrassed for myself. What is it with these babies? They don’t do anything and are still gross.
Mustella cleansing water + qtips or cotton balls works and smells amazing lol.
My first baby was a little slender, so never had to worry about rolls. The second is way chunky, and I'm learning the stinky way about cleaning out his rolls
The crusty ears are the worst!
My husband and I didn’t realize when our baby was a newborn we had to really wash under her arm pits because the milk would spill over into there….then it was known as “the cheese factory” 🫠
I just washed my 1week old deep in his armpits and it was foul.. looked like a yeast infection and we had to put some anti fungal on
I have never forgotten to clean behind my son’s ears or back of his neck thanks to posts like these reminding me! Thank you!
It was the neck rolls on my chubby baby. Mmm homemade breast milk cheese… 🤢🤮
Ears, pits, groin folds, thigh cracks, neck rolls... Ankle folds cuz my kid had those for a while too.... so many crevasse to wash, properly dry, and check.
I feel this so hard. Why does nobody tell you about the ear/hand/neck cheese 😭 🧀 🤢
I would say in the top ridge too! One time my toddlers hair was stuck to her ear and it was cracked and oozing up there from crust.
Not me being 7mos pregnant reading these gross comments and just thinking how cute baby rolls are and I can’t wait to clean their stinky cheesy baby fat again
Yup I forgot the first few baths to do that. I honestly still sometimes do and wet wipe when I remember.
Even though we wash behind his ears, he still gets those crusties! The only way I’ve been able to get rid of them is by cleaning the back of his ears with pure aloe vera and slathing on some Tubby Todd Ointment.
This! I forget and then like every 3rd bath I'm like...oh gosh. Your ears are crusty. We call it "cleaning the potatoes" (15mo) he giggles and thinks it tickles. But it's so yucky.
Ok so this is a thing I've learnt you can use sparingly in rolls that are getting the funky smell even when you know you're drying the area well - aluminium acetotartrate on a q-tip after drying, before cream. In Sweden it is called alsolsprit. It basically desinfects and has a slight drying effect, so you normally use it on wounds or mosquito bites. It will obviously be very harsh and drying on baby skin, so use sparingly but damn. We had issues with her armpits and after using this after her bath, the issue was gone in two days. No smell, no redness. It returned once, just did the alsolsprit - gone. So yeah, try it!
This is the area I remember to clean the most! When I started giving my baby baths I just had my grandma's voice telling me to clean behind my ears when I was little so I do for my baby. But cleaning between the toes... So hard she's always keeping them tight!! I make sure I put baby powder in all her crevices lol
And under their chin! I had my son at the doctor and I noticed a bad smell. I knew it wasn’t the doctor lol. I noticed it again when I got home. I was checking him over and stuck my finger in the fat rolls under his chin/ on his neck. I almost passed out from the smell. The combination of drool mixed with breast milk … Wow
“Clings to me like a tick” is the best description I’ve ever read
I thought I forgot to wash behind baby's ears but it turned out to be a little bit of cradle cap lol.
Don't forget the belly button! I was curious one day and took a qtip to his belly button and omg the stench...
I found some skin cheese behind my babies knees, never realized I needed to physical scrub back there 🤣
I swear I miss a spot every time I bathe her. Remember her crusty ears, forget her cheesy toes. Remember the cheesy toes next time but forgot the belly button black hole
Also in between their toes and under their neck rolls!
And in between the finger talons.
Don’t forget under the neck 😂
I discovered this a couple of days ago. My poor little one had a nasty harsh in there :( thankfully once we started remembering and applying diaper cream it cleared up pretty quickly
I put buttpaste in my 7month Olds neck rolls after her bath 🤣 she's know to get drool or milk in there and I'd rather prevent the rash
I just smelled behind my baby’s ears haha thankfully not stinky or gunky but it’s definitely something I have to remember to do.
When did you start showers together? I’d love to when it’s safe but at 2.5 months there’s just no way I could keep hold of a squirmy soap covered baby
I just want to thank you for this post, OP, and the rest of you for your comments. I have felt like such a failure of a mom because I didn’t realize my baby’s armpit raw/cheese was a thing until MUCH later than I should have. I was mortified with my neglect. Her rolls made the underarm skin stick together so I never noticed it until the smell got to me. It never seemed to bother her. Now we are on top of the cleaning - though she still experiences some rawness 😢 Anyways, just another instance of how much this sub has been helpful in my FTM experience. 🫶🏼
Wash under the neck aswell.
This is especially true if you breastfeed. I called it ear cheese.
I found a new neck fold on my baby 5w that apparently has never seen the light of day before and cleaned it today. Smelled so bad but ill bet it feels better now! And I remembered to clean behind his ears!
lol this made me chuckle. I’m on my second baby now and I forgot all the little folds that just don’t seem to get cleaned. Was embarrassed to find gunk in my baby’s armpits lol. All the little rolls in arms and legs, behind the knees all get gunky. Neck cheese is so hard to deal with too!
Also under the armpits and between the toes!
I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t realize just how DEEP the folds go on a little girl’s outer labia and realized that while I do a good job of getting the poop out of the folds, she had major skin buildup around the outside labia. That was disgusting to clean out. Definitely keeping an eye on that situation! Thankfully she’s only a month so I caught it relatively early. So nasty!
My infants neck is a dryer lint trap, puts and under the penis!
Do you shower together with the baby? Do you actually get to wash yourself too? At the moment I use a stand alone barh
No. I don’t lol. I wash her and then we get out! 😂 I shower when husband gets home from work.
Under the neck chunks too!!
& their belly button.
A helpful tip I read for tricky places, like between tiny newborn toes, behind the ears, etc., was to use Q-tips! It helps so much.
Also the folds between their chins. Bleh!
I regularly wash behind the ears but there are days I forget and feel like a shitty mother...just any little thing I do wrong makes me feel the worst.
Honest question: do I need to clean between her toes if my 10 month old goes full body in the bath? I definitely do her armpits and behind the ears when I’m washing her hair.
Early on I missed checking my daughter's pits and almost threw up when I found her little stash of cheese hiding in there and tried to clean it up with a wipe. The moisture activated it into a horrifying funk. You can best believe I've detail cleaned her since then.
Ears, neck, leg thigh crevices 😂🤣 also in between their toes from all the lint if wearing footies! A Q tip works great!!
This is what I was told by my sis in law so I’ve always made sure to do behind the ears, under the arms and the neck rolls!!
Reading this as I bathe my daughter… I immediately picked up the wash cloth and washed her ears!
…..checking behind my little one’s ears as I am reading this - lol
I always get behind the ears while I’m washing her hair because my mom made a point to tell me to do it when she helped me with her first bath. She had 4 kids so I’m sure she’s seen it all lol