My nine-month-old reacts to flame-retardant sleepwear
Katie found welts on her baby from pressure, baths, scented detergent — and from the flame retardants in an enormous number of infant clothing items.
Katie ·
- Living with it
- Less than a year
- Main trigger
- Pressure, scratching, baths, flame retardants in baby clothing, scented detergent
- What helped
- A daily antihistamine, unscented detergent, and avoiding flame-retardant fabrics
My son is nine months old and he reacts to pressure, to scratching, to baths — and to anything with flame retardants in it, which turns out to be an enormous number of baby items.
That one caught me completely off guard. You buy sleepwear thinking you're doing the safe, responsible thing, and then you notice the marks. Scented laundry detergent and perfumes set him off too.
We give him cetirizine daily and that helps a lot. Switching to unscented detergent and being careful with fabrics made a real difference on top of it.
He also reacted around his mouth to eggs and peanut butter, so we're having allergy testing done — that's a separate question from the skin writing, but when your baby is this reactive you want the full picture.
If you're a parent who just noticed raised lines on your baby and you're panicking: it's more common than you think, and it is manageable.