Would you bath a baby with infected, weeping eczema?

[TheHeathenOfSuburbia]

DS (nearly 6mo) has had the odd patch of dry skin which we've treated with Aveeno.

But at the weekend, he developed really red raw patches tucked deep in his skin folds; took him to OOH doc, who said it was probably infected. Got Fucidin H cream for it and told to see our practice nurse to have it dressed today.

Practice nurses were a bit , which makes me think they haven't seen a lot of baby eczema this bad. Got GP in to prescribe oral AB's, so we have that going on too.

Nurse said, "after his bath, wipe it over with cooled boiled water and then apply the cream". Really? I haven't bathed him since this appeared, surely that would only make it worse? I bought Oilatum today, but there's no point putting that in the bath for wet oozy eczema, surely?

Any and all advice welcome!

Poor baby . I have lived with Atopic eczema (the worst kind) all of my life & my dd also has it . Definitely put oilatum in the bath water (this is great for taking the sting out of the water IMO ) the water will open up his pours so gently pat dry & apply the Fucidin cream which should work very quickly, fingers crossed you should see an improvement by the morning .

The Eczema Society has warned for a few years now that aqueous cream is irritating for many people when used as a leave on emollient due to the SLS content (7%). NICE advised against use as an emollient in 2007. That is also the thrust of the recent research - use as soap substitute, not emollient. Nobody has called for it to be abandoned completely.
According to NHS Choices most of the funding for the 2010 study (small proof-of-concept study that SLS damages skin barrier in healthy people without eczema) came from the govt funded BBSRC, one researcher also had a grant from York Pharma but Diprobase is a Schering Plough product and Doublebase is Diomed/Dermal laboratories, so neither seem to have been involved

correction - the SLS figure should be 1%

IMO and E bathing in warm water with special sea salts dissolved 1st. and NO soap it works esp. if you put the cream on BEFORE and after use a baby bath for this to get a good grip on him!