Baby’s skin.

"At the birth, the skin is a protective envelope, a sensor, a metabolism" (Dominique Simonnet).

During the pregnancy, the baby’s sebum glands are stimulated through maternal hormones. The sebum that they produce lubricates the skin and protects the new-born baby against yeast and bacteria’s.

At the birth, the skin will be the first protection of the baby facing external aggressions. The down called lugano that sometimes covers baby’s skin at the birth, disappears at the end of the first week.
The pH of the skin is neutral at the birth (pH 7). For an infant the stratum cornéum (the lay down cornea) is thinner than the adult’s, but the living epiderme is identical. The baby’s skin is thus thinner than the adult’s but its composition is not different.
The derma is less rich in mature collagens than the adult’s. The permeability of the baby’s skin is higher than the adult’s.

Around the age of 4 months, the activity of sebum glands almost stops, and that until puberty. The skin’s pH will slowly become more acid (pH 6 and then pH 5).

But, until 3 years, the defence mechanisms do not reach their full maturity. Although its structure is similar to the adult’s, baby’s skin is thinner and more fragile. The activity stop of the sebum glands weakens the hydrolipidic film and contributes to enhance the insensitive loss of water. That’s why the skin becomes more vulnerable, easily irritable and dehydrates quicker. Less thick, it is also permeable to the chemical agents and to solar rays.

It is for those reasons that the baby skin dries up quicker than the adult’s skin, and that chaps and cracks could appear.

Moreover, the relation between body surface and weight is three times higher for infants than for adults. So the tissue concentration of active substance is a lot higher for the same application surface. The quantity of active substances needs therefore to be adapted accordingly.

Norms: The dermocosmetic products used for infants and small children have to be chosen carefully and contain ingredients that are perfectly adapted to the skin’s immaturity. They have to be formulated carefully and answer specific criteria’s. The quality control norms for baby products production are submitted internationally to rules which are until ten times stricter than those, already provident, for adult products. Euphia’s products respect the strictest rules and are formulated especially for babies.

Attention: with premature infants the dermo-epidermis junction is imperfect, the lay down cornea is almost inexistent, the epidermis and the derma are a lot thinner; that’s why there is a bigger cutaneous permeability during the first two weeks. Do not use any dermatologic product for premature infants without medical advice.