Finally, I Figured It Out!!

I know I've posted about Taylor's diaper rash before.  It's been an ongoing battle for....a long time.  Even when she was in disposables we had to deal with it.  When we made the switch to cloth diapers, I was hoping it would get better since I've heard cloth diapers can help with diaper rash.  Unfortunately, it wasn't the case. 
Then I thought "well it gets worse when she poops" so I blamed her poop.  But you can't tell a child not to poop.  And I wasn't about to start elimination communication and hold her over a toilet to poop. 
We tried so many different diaper rash creams too.  I finally got one I was excited about: Grandma El's.  I read really great reviews online.  It came shortly after we went on winter break from school.  And her rash cleared up.  Her butt looked great over break.  And I thought "YAY!  We found the answer!"  Then, within the first few days of her being back at daycare, the rash was back and it was bad.  Our daycare provider said "well she did poop a lot today," but I knew that couldn't be the only reason.  Lots of kids poop lots of times every day and they're fine.  There had to be something else.  Then I started thinking about winter break and our diaper changing routine.  I realized that over break, we used cloth wipes with a homemade wipe solution for all diaper changes except poopy ones.  I formed a hypothesis: Taylor was having a reaction to the chemicals in the disposable wipes.  So this past weekend, I made up a fresh batch of wipe solution and used a roll of paper towels to make my own disposable wipes and we started using those.  Then on Monday, I brought the container to daycare and asked our provider to please use those instead of the other wipes.  And you know what?  Taylor's butt is getting better!  It's not like an overnight change, but it is definitely better.
So I guess the point of this is, if you've been battling diaper rash, it might be the wipes.  You can make your own (and my next post will be on how to do that!) or find some "natural" wipes.  I'm not entirely proficient at making my own disposable wipes (and they are rather thin; I plan to elaborate on that in the next post) so I think I'm going to try these wipes from Walgreens and see if they irritate the girls.  They are more expensive but I'd probably just use them for daycare and still make my own (and use cloth ones) at home.