Baby bath products to avoid (and what to get instead)

There’s nothing like putting a baby in the tub for a scrub-a-dub-dub. The warm water is often a soothing experience for little ones, can encourage a better night’s sleep and is part of the night-time bed routine for many families. 

And there’s loads of baby bath products available - from funky fun toys to keep babies engaged, to calming lotions and potions promising soft skin and beautiful smells. Frothy bubble bath mixture lines supermarket and chemist shelves, as do natural and organic moisturisers and baby shampoos.

But not all baby bath products are created equal. In fact, some should be avoided altogether— yes, even the ones that proclaim to be totally natural or organic. To help ensure bath time is a happy and (most importantly) safe time for parents and babies, we’ve compiled a list of some bath products to avoid (and what you can buy instead).

So. if you’re a new parent, or you’re looking for the perfect baby shower present, read this first.

It seems every movie involving a nappy change involves clouds of talcum powder as part of the process. Talcum powder helps dry out the skin to avoid nappy rash so it’s easy to see why parents would have reached for a bottle of baby powder. But talcum powder and baby powder that contains talcum powder are no longer recommended for use in Australia, according to the Royal Children’s Hospital, and companies such as Johnson and Johnson stopped selling talcum-based powder in Australia in 2023, replacing it with a cornstarch base instead.

This is because in its natural form, some talc may contain asbestos, according to the Cancer Council of Australia. 

So if well-meaning friends or grandparents gift you a bottle of talc at your baby shower, it’s probably best to just pop it in the bin.

A baby’s skin is extremely delicate, and while it can be tempting to stock up on sweet-smelling soaps and bubble baths, they can actually irritate a baby’s skin and strip it of naturally occurring oils. A baby’s skin is thinner and more sensitive, so it’s much more susceptible to irritants and allergens that can penetrate the fragile skin barrier. Looking after a baby’s skin in the early days can help prevent skin issues down the road by helping maintain the skin barrier, so for now at least, leave the bottles of bubble bath and soaps on the shelves.

One word: mould. While you would think bath toys would just stay clean all the time (given they are in, well, the bath) it’s actually the perfect environment for bacteria to thrive, causing mould which can then go on to cause all kinds of health problems. While all bath toys need a thorough clean regularly, some bath toys are almost impossible to clean properly, and these are the toys that are best avoided altogether. Think little rubber duckies that squirt out water - the water gets inside and you can’t dry them, so they get mouldy very quickly and can’t be cleaned. Any toy that gets water trapped inside, avoid, avoid, avoid.

So many baby moisturisers and bath products contain nice-sounding ingredients like avocado oil, orange essence, almond oil, goats milk, coconut oil etc, with the promise that it’s all natural and organic. Sounds perfect!

Except that it’s actually advised to avoid baby bath products that contain any kind of food product in them. That’s because current research suggests babies are thought to be at a higher risk of developing food allergens this way, as they are being exposed to different foods through their skin, rather than through the digestive tract.

In fact, many common food allergens are in baby bath products! So to help avoid allergens developing, introduce these foods through the digestive tract first and avoid any baby bath products or moisturisers with food products.