What is Cradle Cap?

According to the NHS cradle cap is “the greasy, yellow scaly patches that sometimes appear on the scales of young babies.” So in essence, if you’re seeing something scaly on your babies scalp it could be cradle cap. It could also appear in a few other places as mentioned on the NHS website.

It is pretty common in babies under one and is not contagious, nor does it cause any harm. It usually clears up by itself in a few weeks to months (but in our case it certainly wasn’t a few weeks!) but as parents we want to try and find ways to improve it quicker to alleviate any risk of infection (but do not pick it off!) and, well, it is rather unsightly on our beautiful babies isn’t it!

Luckily I have to say it’s not too bad on N as you can see in this image. I’ve tried to get the lighting just right so you can see it well but it’s hard. It’s a patch about 1.5 inches in diameter of small flakes towards the front of his head. He got it at about two months (here’s my summary of him then!) but it’s not too bad.

Scalp Comb – Brief Review

So we decided to try out a baby comb. Some guidance we had seen suggested doing this during a bath could help. We bought this comb from Amazon for £5.95. We weren’t sure if it would work but for the cost we didn’t argue. Let’s just give it a go and see if it helps. It has about 4.5 rating on Amazon so cant be too bad!

The comb itself has very soft bristles and a plastic element you hold as you can see. The idea is to gentle rub it over your babies head to remove any flakes that are about to come off. We have done it during bath time to help soften the flakes prior to brushing.

Using this brush you can’t see the impact immediately based on what I saw. However, it didn’t get any worse. Now in fact the cradle cap has pretty much gone entirely which is fantastic.

What Else Could Be Done?

We have to remember that cradle cap generally doesn’t cause any harm and is not contagious. However, if you really want to do something about your baby having cradle cap then there are a couple of other things you could do according to the NHS (here). This includes using baby scalp oil with some baby shampoo, or soak it overnight in petroleum jelly (e.g. Vaseline) or vegetable/olive oil, then shampoo in the morning.

Good Luck

If you’ve got a little one with cradle cap they try not to worry too much. There are things to help but ultimately it should go of it’s own accord as I understand it, and in the meantime it doesn’t cause any pain or harm to your baby.