A mother of three prompted an online debate after she wrote a blog post stating she bathes her baby less than once a week.
"Yep, total confession time: I really don't bathe my baby," Claire Goss, 32, wrote on a babble blog post.
A number of readers responded by calling the blogger "gross," and "lazy."
Claire Goss, the Mass. Mom, said her oldest child got one or even two baths every day, but now the two older children dominated the bedtime scene.
"It can be a good 10 days, but if you met my baby and held him, you'd probably think he smells as amazing as I do," Goss said in an interview with ABC News.
Goss cited a statement from Mayo Clinic that said "There's no need to give your newborn a bath every day. In fact, bathing your baby more than several times a week can dry out his or her skin. If you're quick with clean diapers and burp cloths, you're already cleaning the parts that really need attention - the face, neck and diaper area."
The blogger said one of her older children had dry skin as an infant, and the pediatrician told Goss it was from too much bathing.
"We've learned now that baby skin is very different then adult skin," Doctor Alan Greene, a California pediatrician, told ABC News. "Really, you want to watch your baby more than watching the calendar when deciding to give a bath."
Goss also said she may be less inclined to bathe her baby because she loves the way he smells. A recent study concluded the smell of a baby "does tap right into the pleasure centers of a woman's brain, whether the smell comes from her own baby or someone else's," NBC News reported.
Goss was asked in an interview how she would feel only taking one shower a week.
"I would feel gross because I'm an adult and I have hormones. But I have to go back to, mothers know their babies," she told ABC. "They have gut feelings about their babies, and I would never presume to tell you how often to bathe your baby."
