WORSE THAN EVER!

[MollyMooMin]

For a few days now I've wondered whether my DD has been teething, although no sign of any yet.. she's 16 weeks. Well, she never slept a wink last night & I thought it was teething pain so kept giving her calpol & teething gel. As soon as daylight broke through, we could see she was covered head to toe in excema! It had cleared up, with yesterday being her best day ever... only to get worse than ever at night. Why is this? It's heartbreaking to see her suffering. What can I do?

What does she sleep in?
Is it fairly warm or cool at night? Whenever my eczema used to flare up when i was little it was made 100 times worse if i got at all hot or sweaty.

Do you have any mild cream you could put onto her before bed? I'm thinking something like e45 and just rub it in sparingly all over - might help stop her skin getting irritated.

The only other thing i can think is have you washed her nightclothes/bedstuff in anything different?

Just remembered - another thing we used to do with my sister was to give her a bath with oilatum in it before bed - although i'm not sure if theres an age restriction for it, it was really good stuff

we had major flare ups with teething but mostly only on face rather than other parts of body. body flare ups occured after vaccines... has baby had any recently, check laundry powder etc as it may be irritating her. heat definately makes it worse too. we treat daily whether the excema is bad or ok as daily seems to control it better, we apply vitamin e oil at night, massage with olive oil after bath moisten cheeks and cover with his treatment cream and keep nails as short as possible to avoid scratching.

Message withdrawn

We used oilatum from a very early age. There is also a junior version but we never bothered.
Go to the doctors and get it prescribed so that it doesn't cost you a fortune.
Is he scratching in the night?
We used to have to wet bandage DS's hands to stop him scratching at night. You use a sort of tubular bandage (not tubigrip with the elastic but I can't remember the name) and put a long tube on twist near the fingers fold it back and tape to pyjamas to stop it falling out. Sounds cruel but it stopped him scratching andhelped his hands heal a bit too.

Also different lotions and potions work differently on each child so you need to try out lots of different emmolients/moisurisers until you find one that works. I'm sure there were lots of old threads coving this. have you had a look?

We tried aqueous cream (for us useless), 50/50 (50%parrafin and 50%something else - I cant remember), vaseling intnseive care, a couple of others from the docs, and finally found for us diprobase worked. I've also heard others say it made their child worse but one of the others worked on them. GOod luck. Its horrible isn't it?

Thank you all for your replies. We bath her in oilatum, rub in hydrocortisone & oilatum cream & wash all her clothes in surcare. Nothing in our routine has changed so can only put this flare-up down to maybe she's teething. Funnily enough, her 3rd injections were today... which was lucky in one way as the nurse got to see it at it's worst. Just want to help her more but we're told there's nothing else we can do.

Teething gel can make babies eczema worse, all sorts of preservatives etc. in it.

Bobbybob- really? What do you do then for teething pain relief?

Paracetamol, and I'm talking the relevant amount of a plain white normal tablet crushed up and mixed with a little warm water and given by syringe. - Avoids all the sweeteners and other stuff in the Pamol, which for us is as bad as the teething gel.

Ask your chemist for the right dose, it's based on weight. For instance at 13 kgs bob's dose is a third of a pill, so we crush a whole pill, mix with 15ml of water and then that is 3 5ml syringes given at 4-6 hour intervals. It keeps for 24 hours with a bit of foil placed over the container.