Dear Past Tom: Why Using Baby Oil as Lube is a Terrible Idea

Dear Past Tom,

It's 11:14 PM on a freezing Tuesday in November. By some absolute miracle of the parenting gods, the twins are both asleep at the exact same time. Maya, who usually treats sleep as a mild suggestion, has been out cold since eight. Freya, who wakes up if you blink too loudly, is currently snoring softly into her mattress. The monitor is silent. The house is entirely still.

You and Sarah are lying in the dark, exhausted, covered in a faint layer of dried milk and pureed carrot, but you've suddenly realised you haven't touched each other in what feels like three business weeks. The mood, miraculously, has struck. There's just one massive problem staring you right in the face.

The proper, water-based lubricant is in the en-suite bathroom. The en-suite bathroom is exactly fourteen steps away. But the third floorboard from the door has a squeak that sounds remarkably like a startled seagull, and if you step on it, Freya will wake up, which means Maya will wake up, which means the mood will die an instantaneous, screaming death.

And right there, gleaming in the faint orange glow of the streetlamp outside, sits a half-empty bottle of baby oil on the changing caddy we dragged into the bedroom.

I know what you're thinking. I know exactly what your sleep-deprived, deeply tired brain is calculating. It's slippery. It's right there. It's formulated for the literal most sensitive skin on the planet. How bad could it possibly be?

Put the bottle down, mate. Just put it down. I'm writing this to you from six months in the future to tell you that using baby oil as lube is a catastrophe of epic proportions that will cost you money, dignity, and a very uncomfortable trip to the NHS walk-in clinic.

The geography of a terrified parent's bedroom

Before we get into the absolute biological carnage of what happens next, let's just acknowledge why parents do this. The advice books (specifically page 47 of that one Sarah bought which suggests you "maintain a active romance," a phrase that makes me violently angry at 3 AM) never account for the physical reality of a post-baby bedroom.

Your bedroom is no longer a sanctuary of rest and romance. It's a heavily fortified bunker. Every surface is covered in muslins, half-empty bottles of Calpol, and weird, sticky plastic toys that occasionally make farm animal noises in the dead of night. The baby oil is sitting there because you were desperately trying to loosen a patch of cradle cap off Maya's scalp after her bath.

It's designed to be a moisture barrier. It's literally liquid petroleum—a hydrocarbon byproduct that's fantastic at creating an impenetrable shield over a baby's bottom so wet nappies don't give them a rash. It does this job brilliantly. It's so good at creating a barrier that it can't be washed away with water. Please hold onto that specific piece of information, because it becomes wildly relevant later when you're weeping in the shower at 2 AM.

The absolute destruction of latex

Let's talk about the immediate, mechanical disaster you're about to initiate. You're going to grab a condom from the drawer. You're going to slather on some baby oil because it smells faintly of lavender and desperation.

From what I barely understood while frantically googling "why did my condom disintegrate" while hiding in the bathroom later that night, mineral oil absolutely annihilates latex. It isn't a slow process, either. It doesn't weaken it over time. The oil structurally compromises the latex in about sixty seconds, turning a highly engineered barrier method into something resembling a soggy, compromised tissue paper.

If you use baby oil as lube with a condom, that condom will break. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of exactly how many seconds it takes. If you aren't currently prepared to welcome a third child into this flat—a flat where we already have to store the ironing board in the shower because of the sheer volume of baby gear—you need to step away from the petroleum byproducts.

This is honestly why we've started leaning heavily into natural materials for the girls wherever we can, just to get away from the endless cycle of synthetic plastics and petroleum-based stuff filling up our home. Sarah recently bought this Wooden Animals Play Gym Set from Kianao. I was entirely sceptical at first, assuming it was just another piece of overpriced wooden aesthetic bait for Instagram mums. But it looks genuinely lovely in the living room, vastly superior to that neon plastic monstrosity my mother-in-law bought that plays a discordant version of 'Old MacDonald'. Though, if I'm perfectly honest, at least once a week the twins ignore the beautiful, sustainable wooden elephant entirely to just stare vacantly at a shadow on the wall. Still, the quality is undeniable, and it doesn't give me a headache to look at.

Why our GP looked at me with deep pity

Let's pretend for a moment you aren't using condoms. Let's say you're relying on another method and you think the coast is clear. You're still walking into a trap, my friend.

About four days after the baby oil incident, Sarah started sending me very stressed texts from her office. She had to take an afternoon off to visit Dr. Evans, our local GP. I ended up sitting in those incredibly uncomfortable plastic waiting room chairs, staring at an NHS poster about chlamydia that always makes me feel strangely guilty even though I'm literally just there holding a changing bag.

Dr. Evans is a very patient man. He looked at us over his half-moon glasses and explained, in excruciatingly polite terms, exactly what happens when you introduce an un-washable, petroleum-based moisture barrier into a delicate internal ecosystem.

The vagina is supposed to be slightly acidic, a clever little self-cleaning oven situation. When you coat it in baby oil, you trap whatever bacteria is currently hanging around under a thick, airtight layer of oil. It can't breathe. It can't clean itself. My GP gently noted that people who do this are basically rolling out the red carpet for Bacterial Vaginosis and yeast infections.

Sarah was furious. I was mortified. I had to go to the pharmacy and ask the 19-year-old cashier for specific medical creams while trying to maintain whatever shreds of my dignity remained.

If you're going to put things in mouths or anywhere else, they need to be the right materials. It's the same logic we apply to the girls' teething toys. We picked up the Llama Silicone Teether a few weeks ago because they were chewing on the TV remote. It's completely food-grade silicone, totally safe, and cleans easily when it inevitably gets dropped in a muddy puddle at the park. I'll admit, half the time they still prefer gnawing on my actual knuckles until I bleed, but when they do use the llama, it buys me at least seven minutes of blessed silence. The point is, purpose-built materials matter.

The great Egyptian cotton tragedy

If the medical disaster hasn't deterred you, let's talk about the aftermath of the act itself.

You've finished. You're feeling quite pleased with yourself for maintaining the spark of your marriage despite having two toddlers who actively try to prevent you from ever sleeping again. Now, it's time to clean up.

You grab a wipe. You wipe. It doesn't work. The oil just smears.

You try a wet flannel. Water famously repels oil. The water just beads up and rolls off, leaving a slick, greasy residue all over everything. You end up in the shower at 2 AM, frantically trying to scrub your most sensitive areas with aggressive amounts of shower gel, which strips the skin and leaves everything red, raw, and angry.

And the sheets. Oh god, the sheets. Those expensive, high-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets we bought on our honeymoon in a fit of absolute financial hubris? They're ruined. You can't wash petroleum out of cotton at 30 degrees. You'll wash them three times and there will still be a massive, permanently translucent grease stain right in the middle of the bed, a lasting monument to your laziness.

If you're looking for baby products that actually survive the chaos of our household, you can browse Kianao's collection of sustainable gear. We desperately needed something to stop the endless cycle of losing things, so we bought their Wood & Silicone Pacifier Clips. I bought these entirely out of desperation after losing three dummies in two days under the sofa. The clip is wonderfully sturdy and the wooden beads actually look rather smart clipped to their cardigans. The twins occasionally just ignore the dummy and enthusiastically chew on the wooden cookie charm instead, which wasn't the intended use, but frankly, whatever keeps them from screaming in the queue at Tesco is a win in my book.

What you should actually be reaching for

I know the floorboard squeaks. I know it feels like traversing a minefield just to get to the en-suite. But you've to make the journey.

If you're using condoms or silicone toys, you need water-based lube. It's boring, it dries out a bit faster than you'd like, and it gets slightly sticky, but it washes off with a damp cloth and it doesn't dissolve your contraception in real-time.

If you aren't using toys and aren't relying on latex, silicone-based lube is an option. It's incredibly slick and lasts forever, though you'll still need some soap to get it off properly. Just keep it entirely away from your silicone toys unless you want them to melt into a bizarre, sticky puddle.

And please, whatever you do, ignore the crunchy parenting forums that tell you to just use coconut oil from the kitchen. Yes, it smells like a tropical holiday. Yes, it's natural. But it still destroys latex just as fast as baby oil, and frankly, I don't want to go to bed smelling like a freshly baked focaccia.

Take the fourteen steps. Step over the squeaky floorboard. Walk past the changing table. Leave the baby oil for the baby's dry skin, where it belongs.

Yours in permanent exhaustion,

Future Tom

Before you go making my incredibly foolish mistakes, take a moment to explore Kianao's collection of properly designed, purpose-built sustainable baby goods. Because using the right tool for the job is the only thing keeping us parents sane.

Questions I frantically googled at 3 AM

Is there any type of condom that works with baby oil?
From my panicked late-night research, polyurethane or polyisoprene condoms technically don't dissolve on contact with oil the way latex does. But honestly, even if you happen to have those specific, usually much more expensive condoms lying around, you still have to deal with the absolute nightmare of the grease stains and the bacterial infection risks. Just don't do it.

How do I get baby oil out of my bedsheets?
With great difficulty and big regret. I ended up having to rub neat washing-up liquid directly into the stains, letting it sit for an hour to break down the grease, and then washing the sheets on the hottest possible setting our machine allows. Even then, there's a faint shadow on the cotton that haunts me every time I make the bed.

Can I use baby lotion instead of baby oil?
No, absolutely not. I looked into this too when I was feeling particularly lazy. Baby lotions are full of perfumes, thickeners, and preservatives designed to sit on top of the skin. If you put that anywhere near your internal bits, you're asking for irritation so severe you'll be walking like John Wayne for a week.

What should I use if I'm prone to yeast infections?
My GP made it very clear that you need something that matches the body's natural pH and doesn't trap moisture. Water-based lubricants without glycerin are usually your best bet, though you should really ask your own doctor rather than relying on the medical advice of a tired dad who once accidentally put diaper cream in his own hair.

Is coconut oil genuinely safer than baby oil?
It's safer in the sense that it isn't a petroleum byproduct, so it breaks down a little easier and won't trap bacteria quite as aggressively. But it'll still absolutely obliterate a latex condom in seconds. If you're relying on condoms for contraception, coconut oil is just as dangerous as the bottle of Johnsons.