a good cotton wool ball for daily use (Sainsbury's Cotton Wool Balls)

Member Name: jillycat

Product:	Sainsbury's Cotton Wool Balls
Date:	08/08/09 (107 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: hold water well don't leave bits of cotton wool on you or your baby

Disadvantages: bag could be made of reusable plastic

Cotton wools balls are and have been an everyday item in our household for the past 18 months. As with most new mums we were advised to use cotton wool balls for topping and tailing our beautiful baby boy rather than wipes as this would be better for his skin. I only half believed this as thought it probably was health visitors and midwifes being over cautious. But when we brought our son home from hospital when he was a week old and switched from cotton wool to wipes his bottom started to get red so it was back to the cotton wool for us and wipes for just out and about.

As we often shop in Sainsbury's this is one of our more frequent purchases and I have to say I buy either these or the baby cotton wool balls depending on the offers on.

These cotton wool balls come in a drawstring plastic bag with 50 large cotton wool balls. I can't really comment on how well the drawstring holds up because we always decant them into a box. The plastic is a non recyclable bag too.

The shape and texture of these balls is first-rate. They are a nice large ball and feel pleasant and soft to the touch and not scratchy as some of the cheaper balls can. This means it is nice and gentle for my son's bottom. The balls are very absorbent in my opinion. We dunk these in warm water to clean away the area and they always seem to hold a respectable amount to enable us to clean away any mess. Depending on the nappy we can use between 1-3 balls per nappy change to wash and 1-2 to dry away the area. When he was little and going through lots of nappies a day (at least 10-12) you can imagine the cotton wool balls that we got through. I have found that when buying value, smart price or basics cotton wool because they are smaller in size we ended up needing to use more cotton wool so it didn't really work out any cheaper for our usage.

When we washed his eyes in the cotton wool balls they again performed well and enabled us to clear away stickiness in his eye in one wipe rather than several as some of the smaller balls needed.

I have also used these on occasions for taking my make up off and found that even with my sensitive eyes and contact lens they haven't left any hints of wool in my eyes.

On occasions when I have needed help to sleep I have also put a few drops of lavender oil on to a cotton wool ball and put this into my pillowcase and have found the cotton wool ball has held the oil perfectly and transferred no oil onto the pillow case.

These are currently available at Sainsbury's for 85 pence a bag. In my humble opinion they are one of the better cotton wool balls on the market.

Summary: a good size cotton wool ball that absorbs well