Tell me your eczema story

[kwt]

Feeling
My 5 month old ds's eczema is just getting worse and worse despite eumovate and constant moisturising. We are using hydromol, getting through a tub a week and we are just covered in grease and I spend all day creaming him and trying to stop him from scratching, and so I have so much less time with older dd1 and dd2. He is clawing at himself constantly, day and night.

Please tell me it can get better?

Oh no! Eczema has been a massive part of my own life and my 3rd child seems to have inherited the eczema gene.......she is 8 now and I can finally say she is almost free of it. At 12 months when I gave her cows milk she was covered in facial eczema, then it just continued.....she ended up at the hospital when she reached 6, covered in wrapping and creams. To get in under control the dr gave me some really strong steroid, which if only used in short bursts is really really effective. Even this last week when she has had milkshake s, I can always link milk to a flare up. You think it will never go but I read once that most children who have it as babies grow out of it by 7. My DD was 8 when it got substantially better, so keep going and get the eczema under control with something stronger .

Do you know what the cause of eczema is? Has your DS been allergy tested, milk etc? Do you see a dermatologist. It sounds like the creams aren't working and you need them reviewing. I found the GP useless, eczema needs to be treated by someone who knows what they are doing and you should find out what's causing it. For my DS it's a dairy allergy.

When we started using steroids on DS at 5 months (eumovate and synalar) they started working almost immediately, the difference was amazing. We used them morning and night and used diprobase four times a day. We also bath him in oilatum, wash with aqueous and use oilatum shampoo.

You know you can't use the steroids and the emollient at the same time, you need a gap. Would wet wraps help? Are his hands covered to stop the scratching? How about Piriton at night, we used to give DS it before bed to stop the scratching.

Oh I feel for you, I really do.

Buying Scratchsleeves when DS was a baby was the best thing I did.

At just 4 he can still have awful flare-ups but in between he is way better than he was as a baby. Piriton if he is scratching at bedtime, no fabric softener, all those things help, but it truly is an awful condition for the whole family.

(((hugs)))

A consultant told me once that when you scratch, your skin releases chemicals that makes you scratch even more, which in my own eczema experience is really true, so if you can break the itch /scratch cycle then then this will help speed up the healing

For us, every single time, it is allergy related, food, chemical, airborne reaction.

My dd was hospitalised at 3 months with infected eczema. She spent most of the first year, creamed and bandaged like a little mummy

However she is now 9 and her skin is perfect. If she goes swimming get it flares up in little patches about 5p sized, but, little cream and it goes away.

my DS was allergic to bananas, once I discovered that his eczema cleared up in a matter of weeks.

His face bled, cracked, so red and angry, people stared at his poor little face.

Hope you find something that helps but also as few baths as possible helped my DS, water irritated his skin badly.

I agree with the poster above... Scratch sleeves are brilliant.... We have lots of pairs and keep a pair in the change bag, a pair in the car, a pair in the back of the push chair and always put them on at night and for naps.

www.scratchsleeves.co.uk

Also, when my DD was nearly 1 the GP prescribed Piriton which helped and we used it mainly at night so she could fall asleep and occasionally in the morning if she woke up scratching.

We use soap nuts for our washing but I don't know whether that makes a difference or not. We tried to go dairy free but it didn't seem to make a difference.

We saw a specialised GP eventually who told us that her skin was infected so no wonder the creams weren't working very well and prescribed her oral steroids and antibiotics which had an immediate effect so maybe it's worth checking with your GP. I had no idea her skin was infected, it just was red and itchy like it usually was and the skin was broken in some places due to her scratching. It is now a lot more under control.

It is so awful isn't it..... It used to reduce both her and me to tears sometimes just changing her nappy because as soon as her trousers came off, she straight away started scratching and would make herself bleed.

It now seems like her 9 month old sister has the same eczema which is very disappointing.

I hope you manage to get it under control soon.

Give aloe Vera gel a try (aloe pura is what we use) it's worked miracles on ds2. The emollients made him worse and worse.

Hi my DS2 was born covered head to toe in excema (due to an apparently rare pregnancy related rash I had when carrying him) he would constantly scream and cry through pure irritation from the itching. He wouldn't sleep, wouldn't feed and was late at crawling, walking etc. I'd constantly be smothering him in creams and seemed to spend my life in the doctors with him. However, once he got to about 2yo he just grew out of it. I couldn't believe it! It just started getting better and clearing up until eventually it had all gone. He now has beautiful soft skin (hes now 4 1/2yo) and hasn't had a problem since. I still use oilatum and double base creams etc on him "just in case" but apart from that we have no problems with excema at all. Well, not with him anyway.

For us, nothing worked except steroid creams and I hated putting them on him. Then, like many said above, we got an allergy test and are now off of wheat and his skin is improving dramatically. I think excema is just a term used for a rash they really don't know why is occurring, but there is a source somewhere. Find the source and you'll see the rash clears up pretty quickly!

We've been through this - its terrible to see your precious baby with eczema and itching all the time. Unfortunately every baby is different (it's so annoying when people say that!!) but this is what worked for us.

I tried all of the different things on prescription: diprobase (useless), liquid paraffin (made my daughters skin feel like a roasted chicken), aqueous cream (didn't seem to do anything and I was terrified of what the Internet says about it) etc etc.

We were using hydrocortisone every day all over her as well.

In the end I did what a friend recommended and ordered some Aveeno Eczema Baby cream off of amazon. They don't sell it in the uk so it had to be shipped from the us and takes AGES. But, it's the only thing that cleared up her skin. For us, it's been amazing. Now I buy the Aveeno Skin Therapy and though it doesn't work quite as well it does the job and its loads cheaper and available here. I still use the steroid occasionally to spot treat little bits that are getting out of hand. We use dermol 500 as soap in the bath and balneum in the water - both on prescription.

What laundry detergent are you using? My LOs skin reacts to detergents and we have found that the only one we can use is a brand called SImply. We have used both Simply Pure and Simply Sensitive and they both work fine. Again, it's hard to find (of course!). We have also found that we have to wash all of our clothes and bedding etc in it as well - great because it doesn't actually clean very well!!

My LO is allergic to dairy, egg and sesame (confirmed with a skin prick test last week but we always suspected it). Cutting out dairy and egg from my diet (we are breastfeeding) helped a lot. If you are formula feeding, maybe consider asking for a skin prick test if you can't sort out the eczema. (And don't let them fob you off with the "lots of babies have eczema/they will grow out of it/you are being over anxious" bs!). They can prescribe hypoallergenic formula if needed.

It's worth educating yourself about the atopic march. Basically there is a strong connection between eczema, allergies and athsma. Sigh...the things we never thought about before we became moms...

Hope your little one's skin clears up soon.

My eczema made me look like a burns victim wen I was in my 20s. I had some tests done at York Nutritional laboratory as I had seen a report on the local news and what they did looked fab. The tests can all be done mail order and it changed my life. Not sure if they are still called York Nutritional Laboratory, I' ll have a look. They test for hundreds of different allergies etc by a single drop of blood.

DD's skin didn't improve til we found out the trigger. In her case it was milk and egg (through breastmilk) and detergents. Since cutting these out of her and my diets/use her skin is fine. we use Surcare for all family laundry.

Bathing everyday and moisturising, plus steroid creams for bad flare ups helped.