Am I supposed to be worried about ruddy/slightly dry skin on baby's cheeks?

[britaxmaxwayuser]

Will try and keep this as concise as possible!

We are expats in the Middle East and have twins aged 10.5 months. Boy twin never seemed 'right' with his bottles and it seemed like he was fighting them, although he always had a huge appetite, it was a battle to get them down him when he was little. No other symptoms, but gut feeling was that something wasn't right. He was eventually diagnosed with reflux and after I explained to the doctor that he seemed to be in pain when we were feeding him, we tried a hypo allergenic and then eventually Neocate as part of a trial and error test to see how he got on.

The Neocate really seemed to help him, he started downing his bottles again and we managed to wean him off all his reflux meds.

Weaning has gone well, having started off fairly cautiously I am very happy to give him wheat, peanuts etc now. He is still dairy free though.

We just went to see his consultant, who is largely useless, but I keep seeing her because we have to in order to get the Neocate on prescription!

She ALWAYS goes on about his red cheeks and says it's a sign of allergy. I just wanted to check with some other Brits as to whether or not this is actually true. He does have quite ruddy cheeks and is prone to them being slightly dry, but this could be a combination of his daily scrubs to get the muck off after meals with the horrible desalinated water here and because we go swimming a lot. I also wonder if because the doc is used to Arabic skins which don't tend to have ruddy cheeks that maybe she is being over-sensitive about it?

So, ruddy cheeks - should I be worried? Any advice gratefully received.

My LB had those cheeks - allergies I'm afraid!

Both my DCs have eczema, and when it flares their cheeks always go first, looking red and spotty before getting really dry. Swimming is almost guaranteed to bring their cheeks up, unfortunately. We've never been able to pinpoint a trigger other than water, cold weather and stress/ minor illness, though.

My dd's both had ruddy cheeks at that age and it was usually a sign of teething, or chapped skin in winter.

Neither have any allergies or eczema, dd2 (aged 2) still looks that way if under the weather but it has mainly gone.

My DS had the sore dry cheeks, I have pics of him and it looks awful. I stopped bathing him/ washing hair every night and it cleared up. it was the just the hard water on his face too much

Thanks all. My gut feeling is that it isn't an allergy. It's barely noticeable and it does tend to be more obvious after lots of swimming or face washing, but your replies have been really helpful and I will start keeping a closer eye on it. Thank you.

My DS had dry and sore cheeks, nothing to do with allergies, just teething. DS does have lots of allergies, but they didnt start until he was 4.

When DS' skin was at it's worst we used to slather him in a moisturiser before he got into the pool and again after showering, and it helped enormously, FWIW. He used to wear a sunsuit in the pool so that he didn't slip through my hands, bless him!

My dd had red cheeks and a passing mum said dairy - consultant said not. But it wasn't going so I switched to a non dairy milk and the red cheeks went. No other changes.