How do we sort the baby's dry skin?

[fizzicles]

My 15 month old has dry, itchy skin on her tummy, back and neck. She's waking a lot in the night and scratching herself, especially the back of her neck.

We spoke to HVs, who advised E45 regularly, which we're doing. We are also putting sudocrem on patches that look sore, and doing oat-y baths once a week or so.

Any other advice? Don't want to spend a fortune on lotions and potions that won't work, but if there's something you've found effective I'd love to hear about it.

Thank you!

Are the oat baths the only baths you give? We were bathing DS nearly every night but his skin really improved once we went down to one/two baths per week. A steroid cream might be needed if there is a real flare up.

Less baths.

No, she has a bath every night, no bubbles. I sort of know it'd help to reduce these, she just loves the bath so much I was reluctant to stop them. Did it make a big difference?

Less baths have helped as did oats when we do bath but now we use Childs Farm stuff (it smells awesome). The biggest help for us was a pot of epaderm. We had it on prescription to start with but now buy it on Amazon.

I'm in a similar position with my DD so I really feel for you. I've used diprobase on the red patches and it seems to help. I got it In sainsburys - you can get a cream or ointment, I got the cream as less runny.

Cut back to two baths a week, Oilatum in bath when you do give them, Aveeno cream is good too - oat based.

Aveeno, is an oatmeal based cream which can be used from pretty much new born. I have very dry skin and it's amazing for it. You can pick it up in Boots, Superdrug or Lloyds. I believe you can also get it on prescription. It's without doubt the best product I've ever used for fixing my flapjack skin. It's also really gentle and doesn't sting when applied like some emollients I've used before.

My 6 month old was the same she is down to 2 baths a week, i use the e45 bath foam and dermol from the GP and I found Vaseline worked to take away the flaky dry skin, her skin really cleared up when we did this but she was still scratching her stomach massively so the GP prescribed Eucerin anti redness cream and it's worked wonders, it's really expensive to buy its £20 for a small bottle so ask for a prescription if you wanted to try it

E45 is awful. You need natural oils. We use coconut and almond oils, baby now has beautiful soft clear skin after months of dry flakiness.

I loved epiderm when my dd was little, it was great for her dry skin, saw a massive improvement after we started using it. When she was older we started using dermol and still use that, her skin has improved lots with age. (Had both on prescription).

Thanks guys. I think we will try cutting back the baths, and check out the Aveeno cream. Really grateful for all the advice

Cut the baths down to 2 a week- hugely helped our baby's skin. Diprobase ointment slathered on the dry patches did the trick in a couple of days. Good luck

Sudocream is drying so I wouldn't use it on the bad bits. Your g.p. might prescribe a weak steroid cream to help with flare ups. I was very wary of using it on baby but 2 applications and we didn't need it anymore. E45 looks very gentle but I just used coconut oil or grape seed oil. I wouldn't bother with the nightly bath either.

I used non-bio washing powder and did an extra rince - the clothes should smell of nothing. . I only used cotton clothes next to her skin. Basically synthetic fibres and detergents can be causing a problem.

Sunflower oil! Really. Just like you use for fried eggs.

Or olive oil.

The only thing that really gets rid of eczema is steroid cream or ointment (hydrocortisone) ime. Once it's under control you can keep it at bay with emollients such as Aveeno, cetraben etc. It seems that different creams work for different people so there is quite a bit of trial and error to find an effective one.