Excema, Am I doing enough?

[mower]

Am worried that I may be missing something that I should be doing to treat my 4 month old ds excema. It is very red a sore on his face and head and back and chest. Have been using steriod cream, but am really not keen on using it long term, as can see where it is starting to scar the skin already, so use it once only two or three times a week then apply E45 cream regularly. Trouble is when I don't use it it starts to flare up again. Does anyone have any other tips on managing excema long term? It is breaking my heart.

Mower do you live in a hard water area? 'cos a soon as i started using a good bathwater softener in my D.S.'s quite warm bath it helped him a lot, cont..

Also the homeopathic remedy sulphur cured him!

I too have read recently about the danger of Aqueous cream. My DD never liked it - she said it was stingy and it was all our Dr who acted if the NHS budget was his personal money would ever prescribe. We spent a lot of time and money on different things. We did change washing powders to Filetti or Surcare and never used conditioner - eventually found that most non-bios ok. Also always had cotton clothes washed at 60 degrees (to kill dustmites). Scratch mittens and special mitten eczema sleep suits later helped as children tend to scratch and infect the eczema.
It is hard to shift on a babies face because they scratch and if they have a cold the snot infects the broken skin. I too used to be frightened of steriod cream but I found in the end if I used it more often initially and really got the skin clear and in good condition then only a moisturiser such as E45 was needed to keep it under control for long periods - being timid and only using it a few times a week meant it never healed well enough.
Sometimes we also needed to use Fucidin instead which has an antibiotic in it to clear any infection.When the eczema on her legs was really red and weepy we often found sudocrem dried it up and was much better than applying moisturiser which just made it weep more - a friend had great results with pink Germolene!We also only used shampoos and bodywashes that had no Sodium Lauryl Sulphate in them - dtergent is very bad for eczema.

Eczema seems to be a real case of trying out many different things - lanolin and nut oils in some products can cause problems to get worse. My DD went from being covered in eczema at 6 months to only having some on her legs at age 9 and a little now and again on her hands in her teens so take heart it can improve

More on aqueous cream - It is the sls (sodium laurelth sulphate) a detergent that most people didn't know was in aqueous cream that causes the problems. There were articles in most of the newspapers in October 2010 i think - i'm sure a quick google would find them.

Don't worry too much about what looks like scarring now. My dd1 is now 4.6. She had eczema from a few weeks old. Her face and ankles were the worst affected. When she was a baby I wondered if the skin on her face would ever look any better because it was so badly marked but these days you wouldn't even know she ever had eczema on her face. It is as soft as I thought baby skin would be.

She still suffers a bit and her legs are still very dry but nothing like it was.

We found Epaderm worked best for her. We use it in the bath and as a moisturiser for her.

Also an extra rinse on every wash, no fabric softener and bathing only every few days helps her.

She has other allergies too and asthma unfortunately.

Best of luck.