Baby Butz diaper cream

I’m a sucker for a good story.

Rewind to last fall. I’m at the BabyTime Show in Toronto, checking out all of the new baby and kid products (and basically salivating in my own personal shopaholic heaven), when I stumbled upon the Baby Butz booth.

The founder was there and like any good entrepreneur-inventor enthusiastically launched into the story behind the product. She talked about her son and his rare disorder, calling him her “forever baby.”

Writing that still elicits the same feeling I had standing there. You know the feeling I’m talking about, where your nose tingles as the lump forms in your throat. The two precursors to watery eyes. The feeling that makes you run straight home to your very healthy baby and makes you so thankful for every perfect finger and toe.

In diapers around the clock – for the rest of his life – her son was prone to diaper rash. After her medical-grade supply of rash cream was no longer available, she couldn’t find an over-the-counter diaper rash cream that was effective, so like any mama bear would do, she found her own solution. She created Baby Butz Cream.

Although I took a small jar home as a tester from the BabyTime Show, it wasn’t enough to last longer than a week or two, which isn’t long enough for me to form enough of an opinion for a review. Thanks to Happy Baby Daily Needs, I received a full-sized jar of Baby Butz Cream to really put through the ringer. Er, butt. Er, diaper.

THE GOOD

Four ingredients. Count ’em: four. Zinc, lanolin, petrolatum and starch. This is the shortest ingredient list of any diaper rash cream I have ever used. And I don’t have to look up what any of them mean. I like that.

Baby Butz is licensed as a Natural Health Product with Health Canada. Aside from Penaten, it’s the only diaper rash cream in the country that can make this claim. And it took three long years to get that designation.

This cream really does work overnight. At least it did for us. When Miss Q’s lady-bits were at their reddest thanks to potty training, Baby Butz was the cream we reached for because it always meant the redness was gone by morning.

It’s gluten-free! When I recently had some readers review a “natural” sunscreen, I was surprised to learn that there could be traces of gluten in skin products, which would obviously affect those with gluten allergies and sensitivities. There are also no parabens, alcohol, perfumes or other chemicals you need to worry about. And because there’s no water in the ingredient list, it doesn’t need a preservative either (often controversial).

Made. In. Canada. Can I get a “hells yeah”?!

It’s 12 bucks. That’s it. Pretty amazing for what is actually a natural product.

It’s frickin’ thick. You know exactly where you’ve spread it, and you can see the physical barrier it creates.

THE GAFFE

It’s frickin’ thick! Unless your room is quite warm, I suggest warming up a dab in your fingers for 20 seconds or so before you try to apply it – it’ll glide on much more smoothly. If you choose to disobey me, you’re (a) going to use more than you really need to, and (b) going to be annoyed when there’s as much stuck on your finger as on your baby’s bottom. Either way, be prepared to go through more Baby Butz than you might with other rash creams.

Although the Baby Butz FAQ will tell you that you can use the cream with cloth diapers, please don’t. At least not without a good, disposable liner. Zinc is not your cloth diaper’s friend.

When I met the owner of Baby Butz, and learned that she uses corn starch in her product, I asked – for the purists out there – if the corn was GMO-free. She didn’t know; she’d never been asked before. My guess is that it’s not GMO-free (after all, isn’t corn one of the most GMO-laden crops in the world?), so if this is something that’s important to you, you’ll need to do a bit more digging.

THE GEARS

4.5/5

So…where can you buy it?

• Happy Baby Daily Needs