#5 - Eczema
My little girl started showing skin issues at 2/3 months old…
A few spots were appearing on her face and culminated in full body coverage by the time she was 4 months old but there was no itching at that point.
As a FTM ( first time mum) this is was so agonising to witness!
My GP said it was normal for rashes to come and go. I was prescribed some Daktakort in case it was fungal but that just seemed to aggravate it so I stopped using it.
Initially I had just used Vaseline on her and it cleared up in a few weeks.
I was also using coconut oil on her and Balmonds which I highly recommend and still use.
At 5/6 months old, she had eczema all over her neck. It was raw and red and itchy and heartbreaking to see her suffering.
She spent most of her days in scratch mittens.
I tried soothing it with natural products but nothing seemed to be working so I applied some hydrocortisone which seemed to do the trick until it didn’t..
I was still breastfeeding her at the time.
One of the paediatricians I saw told me to cut milk, soy, nuts etc out of my diet while another told me not to and just keep eating what I was eating so her body would get used to it. I liked that plan better.
We get a lot of conflicting advice on everything, be it diet or the use of steroids so it’s really a minefield when EVERYONE has a different opinion. Even the professionals.
When we introduced solids we accidentally found out at 9 months that she had allergies to garlic, sesame, pistachio and cashew nuts.
Hummus gate was the catalyst for this. After we were feeding it her as a snack, her face suddenly started swelling up, going all red and it she was covered in hives, so we rushed to A&E and they gave her some antihistamines so I’d recommend everyone to have that in your cupboard just in case of emergency.
I think Calpol, Nurofen and Piriton or whichever other brand of antihistamines is a must.
We had her tested after that and results confirmed the above.
Anyway I digress … back to the eczema…The cycle of flare up and steroids was starting to worry me.
When hydrocortisone wasn’t working then we would be prescribed something stronger like a Eumovate and then an Elocon so I decided to just use it as a last resort and then just try and do my best to prevent it by doing the following:
Always moisturising her skin immediately after a bath
Doing oat and salt baths ( we even collected sea water from our trip to the beach and would dab it on her skin when she flared up)
Not using any soaps or shampoos with perfume or additives.
Washing her clothes in Ecover
Only wearing cotton
Make sure she’s never too hot as that’s her trigger.
Eating healthy, avoiding sugar and emulsifiers as much as possible
Creams that have worked for us and that we still use daily:
Aveeno Body wash / shampoo
Nala’s baby (some have parfum)
Dermol 500
La Roche Posay
Balmonds
Shea Butter / shea butter soap
Antihistamines if she’s itchy / calamine lotion/zinc / raw aloe if its 100% natural and I also tried poxmousse
Whenever she gets into chlorinated water we always rinse her immediately afterwards. Some people’s skin react to it some people say it helps!
The frustrating thing with eczema is that everyone’s skin reacts differently to the same products so you can only figure it out by testing all the products out leaving you with tubs and tubes of lotions and potions!
Another thing is that a cream that may have worked for a period of time might start causing reactions.. for example a cream that helped which my GP recommended that was non steroidal was ‘Hope’s relief’ which I got on amazon.
It worked for about a year and half but recently I bought a spray version and her skin didn’t like it so haven’t used it in a while. It’s all trial and error as you’ll hear quite a fair bit!
The good news is that her skin has calmed down massively since she was a baby and now as a 3 yr old she gets the odd patch and heat rash when she’s very hot…
The main thing is to tackle the patch as soon as it arises.
The tricky thing with eczema is that there’s no ‘cure’ or way of finding out exactly what’s triggering it which is so frustrating and the causes range so dramatically .
If your GP is fobbing you off , try and get them to refer you to a paediatric dermatologist and if you think the eczema is infected you can head straight to A&E
I’m part of the Eczema Facebook groups which I also find quite helpful!