hi everybody welcome back once your baby's umbilical cord has fallen out you can bathe
your baby in water and what you're going to want to do is buy a tub like this an infant tub this
makes bathing your baby very very easy and you can find these tubs relatively inexpensively so look
into buying one of these tubs the umbilical cord tends to fall out by the time your baby is about
two weeks of age so you might want to buy one of these even before your baby's born okay so here
I am with my baby I'm going to show you how you can do this initial bath now my tub actually has
a very clever thing that hooks around the sides of the tub and it's padded and it has netting here
so this is a really easy thing to use because as you begin the process of washing your baby rinsing
your baby with water the water just sort of falls down into the bottom of the tub so it's a really
easy thing so look into a tub with this as well if you don't have this thing you can place a towel
along the bottom of the tub just so that your baby feels a little more cozy and secure and is sitting
on a soft surface and not on a hard surface the tub is also very good because your baby
is not overwhelmed by the amount of space around him it's much cozier and it's easier for you to
have control over the way the baby is situated so it's much safer okay so just as with the sponge
bath the key thing here is that you want to have all the elements that you need in place and ready
for you when you need them so you're going to want to have a washcloth and you're going to
want to have the towel into which you're going to wrap your baby at the end with in arm speech
and then what I do actually is I take two plastic kitchen bowls I make sure that they're very clean
and rinsed and I put water inside of them in one of them I have lukewarm water in the other one I
also have lukewarm water and in this bowl I take my soap and you're going to want to use a very
gentle soap that's safe for babies I take my soap and I put a small amount of soap into the lukewarm
water and then I just go like this with my hand and incorporate the water into the soap so that
it's nice and soapy but it doesn't have to be so strong it can be relatively diluted then using my
washcloth which is clean I dip this into my soapy lukewarm water and I begin the process of washing
my baby I go between all the folds holding my baby you can do this on the floor in the baby's room or
you can do it on the bathroom floor I would tend not to do this on a raised surface I know some
people do that but I don't think it's as safe I think you can use this tub on them on the floor so
I'm going to go within all the folds and at times I actually put the washcloth aside and I just get
in there with my fingers sometimes I use my hands to go between my baby's toes along the creases
here in the feet the bottom of the legs this is a nice chubby baby make sure you cover the genital
area if you have a girl important to keep that clean and I'm working my way up the body cleaning
her hands her fingers getting within the folds of the upper arms of the neck using my hands and milk
can also get stuck behind the ears so you want to go behind the ears you see how I do this and
I alternate hands all the while keeping one hand on my little baby okay once the body is finished I
take my hand I use the washcloth to take the soap off my hand and I take handfuls of my clean water
and I spoon it over my baby to make sure that all that soap is coming off and this is how I do her
friend like that I'm going to show you how to do her backside and then we're going to move on and
we're going to do the head and we're going to do the face so in terms of the backside if you're
not comfortable flipping over your baby which is totally normal one good thing to do is just to
sort of tilt your baby tilt her and carefully go around the back side like this okay you do this
on both sides holding her tilting her make sure you get her back and when it comes to the diaper
area you can just sort of lift her legs up a small bit get in there and get her behind so there you
go rinsing same principle spoonfuls of water like this with your hand to just get that soap off your
baby rinse her off carefully now we're going to go on I'm going to show you how to do her head now
as opposed to the sponge bath it's actually less of a concern with washing your baby's head that
the water trickle down the back of her head and not down the front of her head because you're no
longer so worried about getting the umbilical cord wet but it's still a nice idea in my view to just
keep all the soap and everything that's going on here on this side and not to have it trickle down
into your baby's face so when it comes to washing the hair I put my hand underneath my baby's neck
and to give her support okay then I take the same soapy water and I massage the head area like this
all the while giving support to the neck I hope you guys can see all of this then while supporting
the neck I use my other hand and I go along like this washing her neck in the back washing her
head my hand is back on the neck I'm going to just dab my hand onto my washcloth to keep it nice and
clean and I'm going to spoon over my water this is really an important thing the taking the water and
putting it in a bowl because you want to be very very careful with temperature some people bathe
their babies right in the sink and use the running water from the tap but you have to be very careful
it's common for water to have sudden changes in temperature and you really don't want your baby
to be exposed to water that's too hot so there I go nice and rinsed off okay now I'm going to
do the face now when it comes to the face even at this stage I still don't use soap I just use water
and I use my hands so I'm going to go I'm going to clean her forehead I'm going to clean her cheeks a
little bit on the chin you can use a washcloth for this also and now I'm going to do her eyes
with the eyes I use a gauze pad and I put this out before the bath and I just use clean water and the
gauze pad because you're going to get those really really goofy eyes and you're going to want to get
that stuff out but you have to be very gentle this is a repeated motion you don't just whip
it all off and it's going to be thick and crusty and you should not use wipes for this they have
chemicals even if they're safe you just want to use water in a gauze pad so you're going to go
from the inside of the of the eye to the outside like this very gently gentle gentle pressure and
do it repeatedly and gently and sooner or later all that [ __ ] is going to come off nice and
gentle okay so I have my towel waiting right here and I am going to place my towel over my baby like
this okay and then I'm going to put one hand over my baby and with using the other hand I'm going
to wrap the rest of the towel underneath my baby like that so that she's nice and warm nurse she
goes she's nice and clean she's ready for her pajama and you know how to do your baby's bath