PLEASE HELP - Sore skin around 17mo’s mouth

[MamaMur]

I’m at the end of my tether….

Our 17month old son has had really red skin around his mouth for months, sometimes dry and flaky, sometimes red and weeping. It seems to flare up and down.

We've been back and forth to the doctor and have tried various anti fungal or steroid creams - hydrocortisone, timodine and fucidin, as well as over the counter remedies - Vaseline, bepanthen, sudocrem, and some all natural remedies from his grandmother.

As a newborn he was breastfed and then moved to cows milk formula - he reacted badly and so was on goats milk formula since which has been fine.

We cut out raw dairy and tomatoes at home and nursery about a month ago and saw significant improvement, by new year it was SO much better.

On New Year’s Day a friend gave him a very small piece of chocolate and it’s been down hill from there. Today was his first day back at nursery and they accidentally gave him bolognese with tomatoes in and it looks so bad now. They have now put precautions in place to ensure he has no dairy whatsoever (raw or cooked) or tomatoes.

We’ve stopped using wipes for his face and only use water now to clean his face.

We will continue to cut this out of his diet but is there anything else I can do? It looks so bad tonight it’s breaking my heart, he’s possibly teething too so lots of drool and he’s constantly wiping it. As it’s been going on months I’m worried it scars or gets infected.

He does use a dummy (used to be 24/7) but we have weaned this to nap and bedtime only.

Any suggestions?

Note: photo was taken in the bath so it looks weepy but it’s just wet from the bath.

In the short term has he had some tots piriton?

No - good shout I’ll try that, thank you :)

Aw poor mite - bumping for you!

My son had this for a year on and off and it was awful. Our solution was timodine given by a dermatologist and was the only thing that worked but can see you've used this and it hasn't worked, we had to apply it 3 times a day and an emollient constantly in-between and before he ate to stop anything aggravating it, we also put it on at bedtime when he was asleep as he used to wipe it off. But we had to go in hard to start with and then started reducing it as it improved and it totally cleared. I'd go to the GP and ask for a dermatologist referral. Also my boy has no scars at all from a year of this. Oh and we did have to get rid of the dummy as the saliva was making it so much worse! It was hard but we had to do it x

It looks like Perioral dermatitis triggered by allergies, I'd also say it looks infected.

What I would do (parent of children with eczema and allergies) :
Infant piriton and calamine lotion to cool, to help sooth until tomorrow.
GP appointment tomorrow - say you are concerned it's infected, if getting no further with your GP ask for a second opinion from another GP in the practice.
You should also ask for a referral to a Consultant Allergist and Consultant Dermatologist - your LO needs allergy testing and more specialist advice on how to maintain LO's skin until allergies stabilised.

Aquaphor has worked wonders for us - a thin layer and get rid of the dummy, I put a pinprick hole in the dummy, it become wet inside / had squishy noise when sucked. It became annoying to my LO and he gave it up. Obviously only do this when your observing him.