Homemade Oatmeal Bath

I love oatmeal.  I eat it in some form almost daily (overnight oats, pumpkin spiced oatmeal, oats in my yogurt, or added to muffins and cookies!)  But did you know it's also good for lots of different skin conditions?  Before we figured out my son had food allergies, he had really bad eczema.  Poor baby would wake up in the middle of the night scratching away, so often I would use the Aveeno Baby Oatmeal Bath. It always worked pretty well and I've been using the Aveeno Baby Soothing Relief Wash since he was very young.  Thankfully, his eczema is much improved so I no longer keep the oatmeal bath on hand.  *Aveeno has no idea I'm writing this post, these are products I use on a regular basis.  Unfortunately Therefore no compensation was received.

However, I found myself needing it the other night.  With all the rain we've had, and wacky weather, the mosquitoes are UN.REAL.  You can literally get swarmed by mosquitoes in a matter of minutes depending on where you are.  Sure enough, my middle child managed to get eat up (I'm talking 20 bites alone on one arm). My MIL let the kids walk into the woods, not thinking about mosquitoes.  My daughter said they walked a few steps in, and were immediately swarmed!  They high-tailed it out of there, but too late.  The damage was done.  So she comes home, itching, itching, itching.  The only thing I knew to do was put her in an oatmeal bath, and give her some Benadryl (we had tried every topical thing available).  Of course....I was out of the oatmeal bath (we stay stocked on Benadryl however!)  I did a quick search to find out if I could use regular oatmeal, and sure enough, you can.  All you have to do is take your regular, old-fashioned oats, and grind them up in a food processor or blender.  

(these actually needed a few more pulses)

This was one of those duh! moments.  I couldn't believe I had been paying 5 or 6 bucks for oatmeal bath, when I had all I needed sitting in the cabinet!  I just always assumed there was something added, or something different about what you bought in the store.  My daughter would not have questioned it if she had seen me open a packet and pour it into the bath, but she really thought I was off my rocker for getting it from the pantry.  I think she thought it was one of those "weird" experiments - like the time I made tofu parmesan (which IS good!) or tried making chocolate pudding out of avocados (I'm still convinced this can be done, just got to try again!).  

All you need is one cup of oats, a food processor or blender, and grind them up to a powder consistency.  Sprinkle 1/3 (for little ones) to 1/2 cup for big kids under running water.  Swirl it around to mix, and then soak in it!  After having to practically threaten my child, she finally got in the oatmeal bath, and felt much better afterwards.  She even took another one the next morning without me saying a word.  See, Mother does know best!

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