How to Give a Newborn Baby a Sponge Bath

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Liz Hood on behalf of Expert Village and I am going to be talking about how to give your newborn a sponge bath. Now, things that you need to have before you start giving a sponge bath are a towel, to kind of dry them off of course but also to keep them warm while you are washing other areas. A bowl of plain warm water, a soft baby washcloth and little cotton balls or cotton wipes like I have here. Oh, don't do that. So, what you need to do is squeeze out your washcloth until it doesn't have anymore dripping water and just kind of lightly go over the areas that need to be cleaned, like the diaper area, the neck area, some of the face and keep this over him while I do the other areas. When Aiden was spitting up a lot on his back he would get a lot of nasty dried spit up in the back of his hair right here, so now would be a good time to get rid of that. Kind of wash off that area and then kind of wet your cotton wipe and kind of go in and you can just kind of wet the eye booger if he or she has any and then deal with the other eye and then come back and wipe the eye booger away. Eye boogers and become very sharp and painful if you just go ahead and just poof. Then you can use another cotton wipe dipped in water, kind of squeezed out a little bit to deal with this area of the baby's ears. You never, never, never go inside of the ear with a Q-Tip, that is very bad. Babies are very random, they move around really jerkily and random and it would be a very easy way to perforate an ear drum. Alright, then after you are done kind of go over, kind of pat everything dry. Make sure everything is dry, especially the creases of the diaper area and this neck crease. Then go ahead and put on a fresh diaper and you are good to go. Now, if you don't happen to have an actual changing table like this, another good place to do a sponge bath maybe is on the kitchen counter right next to the kitchen sink. Of course as always, you never leave the baby on an elevated surface unless you are at arms length. You never leave them up there while you go do something, even if it's just across the room. When I have him up here, even if I just reach back here to get a diaper, I always keep a hand on him just so that he won't roll off in just that split second. Another area that you can do a sponge bath if it's warm enough of course is just the floor, just do up a towel on the floor and you can do it there."