Sleepy Owl Baby Bottom Balm (mini-review)

THE PRODUCT

Sleepy Owl Pure Baby Care Bottom Balm in blue chamomile, $12. Please note that this product contains oatmeal.

THE GOOD

Big B isn’t going to like this. Not one bit. But it goes to the character of the product. And so it must be said. Sleepy Owl’s Baby Bottom Balm wins when it comes to all of the kids’ butt creams that my husband has…well…had to use on himself. There! I said it! Many men use baby wipes; I feel like we all know this. What I’m not certain of is the percentage of membership in the secret society that is male adult users of diaper rash cream. I have this horrific feeling that Big B is basically the Grand Imperial Poobah of them all; so let’s just say that he’s got incredibly authentic intel to share when it comes to all of the creams we’ve ever tested out here at Mommy Gearest HQ. And he swears this is the best one yet. And I have to say that although our kids never got diaper rashes, they both still get bouts of redness because neither are night-trained, so all that pee against their skin all night can do damage. This cream clears everything up really nicely, and usually overnight.

You know when you stick your finger into a tin of Penaten or some other zinc oxide-based diaper rash cream? It’s sticky. Thick. And you need to warm it up between your fingers before you apply or it just rolls around a little like play dough. Well, this product is light and smooth and glides onto your babe’s bum effortlessly. Calling it a “balm” is a bit misleading; it’s far less waxy and goopy than a balm. It’s really a very lovely cream.

I was worried that because it seems less concentrated than the Penatens of the world that we’d go through the 130-gram bottle really quickly, but that hasn’t been the case. A little still seems to go a long way, and at only $12 for a really good-sized bottle, that puts Sleepy Owl’s Bottom Balm in really good standings when it comes to cost-per-use.

It’s made in Canada!

The blue chamomile Bottom Balm has organic shea butter, bees’ wax, cocoa seed butter, vitamin E and oatmeal extract in it. So aside from the zinc oxide, there are a bunch of other really natural ingredients at work here.

THE GAFFE

And thought there are heaps of “clean” ingredients in this product, scoring zeroes and ones in the Skin Deep database, like another product from LaVigne Organics I reviewed not long ago, this Bottom Balm contains emulsifying wax (score of 4). While it sounds really harmless (after all, it’s easy to pronounce and wax is reminiscent of the goop in your ears), the problem is that (1) we don’t know whether it’s plant- or petroleum-based unless we get more information from the brand (and you really don’t want the latter), and (2) we don’t know what kind of detergents were used to emulsify the wax. That doesn’t need to be reported in the ingredient list. [As an aside, I’m pretty sure it’s petroleum-free, but you need to be aware in a more general sense of what this ingredient means when you see it listed.]

THE GEARS

4.5/5