To not have a clue what to do about my DD’s eczema

[Yellowpolkadot]

Dd (1 year) has been having an awful time with her eczema. It is mainly over her shoulders and happier bag but it is raw and weeping. We’ve been to the gp several times and have been given two different steroid (one with antibiotics and one with antifungal) to try to calm it down but they don’t seem to be working. DD is clearly really uncomfortable and tries to scratch at it and sometimes over night manages to make it bleed. We moisturise her 4-5 times a day and have been applying steroids and giving Piriton as prescribed.

We are back at the doctors tomorrow, but I’m just wondering if anyone has any suggestions, anything I can buy or ask the doctor for to help her as she is miserable 😢

Lots of good advice with foods and washing given by pp. definitely worth looking into.

I suffer with eczema and dermatitis. I’ve been prescribed many steroid creams etc that don’t work as there must be something in them that I’m allergic to. I’ve found that the most gentle one is derma care 1% cream from boots. If you’ve not already tried this cream it’s definitely worth a try. It stops my itching fast and clears up my really bad dermatitis quite fast.

Agree with PP regarding Epaderm but Allthebiscuits has made a really valid point, there are very few doctors who acknowledge that red skin syndrome and topical steroid withdrawal are a thing, please PLEASE do not give your baby more potent steroids before reading about these two conditions.
I speak from experience and it isn’t a widely known thing, if you want to continue after reading about those then that is totally your decision but I must draw your attention to it. Hope your daughter feels better soon OP

Should have worded that better, Allthebiscuits has made a point that steroid creams aren’t the way to go, not about the RSS And TSW

Hydrocortisone is a very weak steroid. The OP may well need a stronger one to sort the condition. For some people there aren’t other options.

DH has terrible eczema and DD also has ezcema we have found they both have different triggers and different things help relieve them, so unfortunately it is trial and error to an extent.

For DD we keep baths to a minimum, creams all exacerbate her eczema so we use hydrocortisone ointment rather than cream and 100% pure coconut oil. The coconut oil has been brilliant, we tried all the usual creams before that and they seemed to make things worse, even though DH swears by diprobase (a cream). Dh also has a range of different topical medicines for use on different ezcema related problems. He also had allergy testing and was give a list of things to avoid, that was after a serious asthma attack, but I would imagine it would also help with eczema.

Poor wee thing :( Myself and my daughter have both suffered from excema it's really miserable. I found that stopping baths helps. Just a quick (not too hot) shower daily and then spend some time moisturising all over with Aveeno lotion until completely absorbed, straight after whilst skin is still warm/damp. A little Steroid cream from the doctors just on the worst parts. Stick with this routine. I hope this helps.

@Wolfiefan Sadly, I ageee.

Yes my DS had eczema that was triggered by dairy. No cream seemed to help, but eliminating dairy did. Just swapped his dairy based products for non-dairy - plenty available in supermarkets. Maybe start off by giving your DD her bottle with mainly milk but part non-dairy alternative, and just keep upping the non-dairy bit until she gets used to it (rather than switching completely straight away, which might not work). DS liked the (I think Alpro) non-dairy yogurt - it tasted a bit like custard!

Poor mite. I hope you get some help. My only input is «child Farm « products. I use them and my nephew who has eczema used them and found a huge improvement. Online it in boots you can get them. Not expensive. Good luck 🍀

My advice is fairly random: Do you live anywhere near the sea? When my daughter was a toddler, she had not very horrid but still fairly extensive eczema. We went for a two-week holiday in Greece, bathing in the sea every day there. The eczema completely cleared up.

Sounds like my DS. GP very unhelpful and told me ‘that’s just the type of skin he was born with so I’d have to live with it!’ I cried when he said that. Went privately to a dermatologist who prescribed Cetraban bath emollient. He was a different child after about 2 baths. We couldn’t believe it. Bath every night then moisturised with Doublebase. He’s now 14 and hasn’t needed anything on his skin for about 9 years.

Unguentum M, prescribed by GP with instruction to mix it with a small amount of Dermovate, sorted the very disabling eczema I had on my hands, which used to crack and bleed if I so much as picked up a pen. It went away over a couple of months and never returned.

wherearemycrayons sounds like you've been through the same thing as me and I bloody wouldn't wish TSW on anyone. At least I didn't make the same mistakes with my own DS who is now in a good position with the systems we have in place.
For anyone else looking into helping (not curing) their eczema with dietary changes I can recommend dr Karen Fischer. She's an audience lady who's own daughter struggled with eczema and there's some good science behind it - TH1/TH2 imbalance, reducing foods high in natural histamine/salicylates to prevent vasodilation and what vitamins might help, nothing herbal, just genuine deficiency. I say that as someone hugely sceptical about these kind of things

**aussie lady

@Yellowpolkadot we tried body shops hemp cream after trying tons of products. This one works the best but only once his eczaema / psorasis was under control.

We also use Dexeryl (SP?) prescribed but only good again once under control.

@Yellowpolkadot

www.thebodyshop.com/en-gb/body/body-butters/hemp-body-butter/p/p001113

we smoother him in this every night

Out of interest, what did the dermatologist do that was different?

We have an 18mo who suffers. Things we do:

• bath everyday
• dermol 500 in bath and nothing elss
• cream as many times a day as possible with the emollient that works best for her. Its Zeroderm ointment for us
• Fairy non bio and no fabric softener for DC's washing
• limit exposure to carpet / grass (where allergens can be found)
• steroid cream for flares, make sure you use until eczema clears and then "wean".... so use steroid cream every other day for another week. This makes clear Eczema is truly calmed.
• ask if there is a dedicated eczema / allergy nurse at your GP surgery
• you can try dairy free but I wouldn't without speaking to a professional (we did it as DC is under a dietitian anyway and its not made much difference!)

It's hard and my little one only has it moderately.

Apologies if this has already been suggested. Are you in a hard or soft water area? We have dreadful hard water and my dc's excema stopped when I changed them from baths to showers.
All that bathing with oils and solutions was only making it worse.

I've had two with eczema involving derma referrals, I found Aqueous cream and dermal 500 to be awful, as soon as we put it on DD she went red and started scratching. Emollients that are 50/50 to be okayish and Aveeno Baby to be quite good. Burts Bees only for bath/hair, double rinse in the washing machine. (There is evidence that its triggered by detergents.)

The steroids the GP gave us were totally useless, they always start with the weakest, whilst your child's eczema gets worse and ends up getting infected, so getting a private derma consultant to give us some decent steroids was the way to go but you could demand that your GP gives you something stronger.

Milk: I switched both of at one year to Oat milk, I did this gradually e.g. 3/4 normal milk 1/4 Oatly in a bottle and never had any problems with the switch.

My DS has a terrible flair up about a similar age. We were referred through to the dermatologist and were seen reasonably quickly. The immediate problem were the infections so we had oral antibiotics (he's allergic to penicillin but I think for most amoxicillin is the best for this sort of thing) and then went through a variety of steroid creams to work out which one of those controlled the break outs best. In my experience it is a case of trial and error with steroids and just because they work now, doesn't mean they always will. We have ones with fucidic acid.

He still has flair ups and it is v difficult. He will lie in bed itching and scratching. They tend to be at the top of his legs and on his torso as well as in the crook of his elbow.

I was originally told to exclude wheat, dairy, soya and eggs from his diet but after 2 weeks of pain I gave that up. It was ludicrous and had made absolutely no difference as well as making it exceptionally difficult for him to eat anything other than meat, fruit and vegetables.

Go back to your GP, get referred and ask them to change up the steroid.

I had horrific skin problems a few years back. I was on steroids and creams from the doctor (strong stuff) and nothing worked. I found calendula cream on Amazon after reading some reviews. Gave it a bash and problem solved!!! Might be worth a try?

My GP resisted the idea of allergies and testing for them and it was all about creams/washing in cream/ applying cream and steroids. DD did turn out to be allergic to diary (was most suffering when exclusively BF but I ate loads of diary) and some nuts.
She eventually mostly grew out of milk allergy (re-introduced after a year using a milk ladder approach) and can tolerate moderate amounts.
We also went to a homeopath who massively helped.
It's never just skin as an isolated issue, in most countries (lived and have relatives in other countries) doctors look into your diet first thing, here they just shove hydrocortisone at you - I was advised to just apply more the worse it got - and its instructions specifically mentioned not applying on the face, in the end her face was the worst 🙄

Thank you lots of food for thought, gp reluctant to refer yet and has insisted on trialing at least one more cream before referral. Will look into some of the suggestions here in the mean time.

@PissedOffProf unfortunately we live about as far away from the sea as you can get!!

I know this is a long shot, but I've come across this thread from 2019! and can I please ask where in Greece this is ? @PissedOffProf . I am desperate to cure my DC's eczema, and I know sea water is good for eczema. Clearly, the east coast isn't good enough.

I need to take my DD back to doc for her eczema again but this has made a difference for us in the past:

• Good handful of porridge oats in an old pair of tights/ pop socks and hang over taps of the bath. Something in it helped to soothe my DD’s flare ups. Obviously. we do this in parallel with medical products and emollients.
• Pure sweet almond oil also helps mild flare ups and maintenance.

Good luck with it. It’s very distressing.