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48 of 48 found the following review helpful:
 REFORMULATED!!!! Dec 03, 2011
By A. Redmer
"SafeatHome"
Reformulation on California Baby Calendula Cream Be Aware: In the old formulation, water and calendula were the first two ingredients -- the new formula Calendula is the 8TH INGREDIENT - water, caprylic capric triglyceride, cetyl alcohol, stearic acid, glycerin USP, cetearyl olivate and sorbitan olivate, canola oil and FINALLY Calendula! This formulation is much cheaper for the company and yet they still charge an avg. of $5 an ounce!! I'm pretty outraged -- if you use California Baby please let them know how you feel about this change in formulation and look to make sure the products YOU use haven't also been reformulated. ---- Please note that my son who has severe eczema used to have NO skin reaction to the old formula and now he has pain on application and redness in his skin for up to an hour after it's applied.
I also want to note that it wasn't until my son started reacting to it that I even compared the labels --- no notification of reformulation on the new containers at all -- completely unethical -- so very disappointed.
34 of 36 found the following review helpful:
 Miracle Cream? No, Reasonable Alternative? Yes Nov 20, 2009
By goonius
Both our children have eczema, and have since they hit about the 15 month mark. They have it during the summer months and the winter months. They get it from sweat when they're wearing formaldehyde-drenched Chinese-made clothing and when they're wearing Oeko-Tex certified organic clothing from Peru. They might be allergic to foods (the possible allergen list is a mile long, and it's not like the doctors could possibly test for everything; elimination diets have been futile). They're certainly allergic to that big hickory tree over their play equipment. Cats, dogs, mold, dust, you name it.
So, when all else fails, and you can't weed out the source, you want something to make the symptoms go away. In the case of eczema, you can either suppress the immune reaction (topical steroids) or combat the resulting itch and moisturize and heal the inflamed, damaged skin. California Baby Calendula Cream performs the tricky combination of controlling the itch long enough to heal the skin. It works reasonably well the majority of the time.
Calendula (or pot marigold) extract has been proven to have anti-inflammatory properties, among others, in plant pharmacological studies and has been used topically to reduce inflammation and soothe irritated tissue for centuries. Of course if your child is allergic to plants in the marigold family, calendula would (obviously) have the opposite effect.
I wouldn't be surprised if this has chamomile in it as well, though the label doesn't disclose the contents of the 'proprietary oil blend'. It does have a pleasant tea-like smell to it, and chamomile has been noted to have similar soothing effects.
The rest of the ingredients are dedicated to moisturizing the skin. Because of the density of this cream, it stays on the skin, and because the first ingredient is purified water, it is quickly absorbed. It leaves skin feeling incredibly smooth, but not at all greasy.
The big drawback here is that if your child has severe eczema, you might have to apply this 3 or 4 times a day to the most affected areas. Our children do have severe eczema, and this can keep it at bay if I remember to apply it frequently. Of course I don't always remember. Then there's the cost of applying this cream multiple times per day to two children. We go through one jar per week easily.
So, why not use another moisturizer? Well, in our case, almost all moisturizers we've tried (Aveeno, Nature's Gate, Cetaphil, Eucerin, and others I can't recall now) actually irritate the kids' skin even more, whereas this and the Sensitive Skin California Baby lotion do not. Vaseline works as a barrier cream, but it ruins clothing (mine and theirs) and isn't easily absorbed by the skin.
So, we keep trying other things occasionally, and keep coming back to California Baby. While it is not a miracle cream, it is a heck of a lot better than the other stuff that's out there. (It should be at that price.) It works pretty well most times, sometimes clearing their eczema entirely for brief periods. Another reason to like it is that it rates fairly low on hazardous ingredients according to the Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep Database. All the other mainstream lotions we've tried were considered to be moderately hazardous, and when you read a bit more into this stuff, they just don't seem like good things to be applying to a baby or young child's skin. Most common lotions have ingredients that are actually considered to be irritants, which may explain the children's reaction to other moisturizers.
If your child has eczema, and you're at your wit's end trying to find something, anything that will improve their quality of life, it can't possibly hurt to give this stuff a shot. Pricey as it is, there are so many days I'd give anything just to not have to watch my children irritably tearing at their own skin. This calendula cream has definitely been a source of relief for them - and thus, for our whole family.
23 of 25 found the following review helpful:
MIRACLE cream for my young baby's eczema! Jun 15, 2009
By Kiyomi
I am a first time parent and was concerned when my 3 week old developed some small red spots and splotches near her eyes. The doctor said it was eczema and to use any lotion to moisturize and it should go away. To my horror, it spread RAPIDLY over the next 2 days to her neck, scalp, and covered her entire face and forehead. My little girl was rubbing her face and it was irritated and itchy. It was so terribly dry that around her eyes and eyelids it was thick and crusty and I feared she may have a different infection inside her lids.
At this time I looked online to see what would work. There were so many options to try Disney baby cream, Aveeno, Mustela, but I decided to try the California Baby Calendula cream because I received a small sample tube in shower gift set. I had read reviews that it worked immediately so I began applying the cream at every feeding (every 2-3 hours). It has a spa-like smell, that smell that salons and spas have when you get a massage or facial. After about 7 hours I noticed that the skin was smoother and a little softer--maybe a 20% improvement...not exactly the miracle I was hoping for but better than nothing. So I ran out and bought 3 containers and a humidifier since it's dry in our house. That night I put the cream on her face and ran the humidifier and in the morning her skin looked dramatically better---70%! That was on Friday. By Sunday it was completely cleared up and her beautiful skin was back to normal! I put it on every day now since I've learned she has sensitive skin and I use California Baby's shampoo/wash too since I read the Johnsons head to toe body wash I was using has an ingredient--quaternium 15?--that futher irritates rashes and eczema. I don't even leave the house without this cream for my baby!!!
9 of 9 found the following review helpful:
Why ruin a perfectly good product?! Jan 20, 2012
By SAHM
Let me start off by saying we LOVED this cream when it was the old formulation, as the review "safeathome" said this new formula is horrible. The new formula smells bad, Calendula isn't even one of the top ingredients and now they added a bunch of chemicals to the new formula that we are not ok with. When I bought the new formula I was excited to try it out until I read the ingredients label. Luckily I did not apply any to my toddler's skin. I tried it out on my face numerous times and it started to sting really badly, and I have never had sensitive skin. It makes me upset that companies have to change formulas and ruin a perfectly good product. Also I do not like the fact that the owner of the company never came out and stated the formula change, only simply stating that the labels have changed. We will not be buying anything else from this company, so disappointed.
8 of 8 found the following review helpful:
They ruined a good thing Dec 29, 2011
By NYCmom
I no longer like California baby calendula cream. Their formula now is completely ineffective and smells yucky. It seems like the second time they changed it from the summer of 2009, when we started using it first. But it was still okay, just not as great, for a while. Now it's just useless and gross. It has not caused an adverse reaction, like it did for some, but I will no longer use it on my child. Nor am I planning on buying other CB brand products. I don't trust them anymore. They never announce changes in formula and quality keeps going downhill. I am looking for a substitute for calendula cream.
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