Eczema - could Aveeno be making it worse?

[MegBusset]

DS (10 weeks) has had eczema for a little while, mainly on his hands with a few patches on his arms and legs. Saw the GP on Tues who gave us Aveeno to bathe him in, which we hae done. But over the last couple of days it has really flared up and now his arms and legs are really red and sore-looking

Obviously we are going to stop the Aveeno baths and see if that helps,but just wondered if other MNers had had a similar reaction to Aveeno?

hello, we haven't used Aveeno but I do recommend this product
www.soorganic.com/home.php?cat=199
Essential Care baby shampoo and body wash...

for certainly not worsening eczema. Our lo had it around his eye which was horrible as he wanted to scratch. I've found this brilliant. It's not cheap I have to say but perhaps if it's more widely avail the price might come down... the range was developed by a suffolk family whose kids have eczema. any way it might not help you but I hope it does x

I didn't find that Aveeno did much good. With eczema you need to moisturise, moisturise, moisturise using the most neutral cream possible & forget about the daily bath!

Sauce, what is the most neutral cream? Even aqueous cream, that the health professionals always say is good, is full of stuff including sodium lauryl sulphate,a strong irritant.

Do you have any recommendations?

Only some personal observations to add, nothing authoritative. I'm sorry to hear about your poor dry-skinned DO; eczema is a real drag. My DS (now 3) has a mildish version now but has been quite scabby at various points in his life. We have found Aveeno pretty good, but we started out using Oilatum Junior bath additive - you could try this? Avoiding bathing as far as possible can help, as immersion in warm water inevitably dries the skin, so just do the obviously dirty bits and sponge him down if he's sweaty. We also use a fab moisturiser called Dermol which does seem to really help. I'd also add that you shouldn't feel guility about using hydrocortisone if he gets really bad patches - it's much milder than is used to be, so doesn't think the skin the way the old style version did - and bad, untreated eczema damages the skin far more than HCs. Good luck, hope you get it under control soon!

My DS (now 13.5mo) suffers a bit from this and Oilatum Jr has helped to keep it under control. We use both the bath additive and the cream. Slather on the cream, it's fab. For flareups we use hyrdrocortizone cream in spare quantities and it really helps.

HTH. Good luck

I was afraid of that question! I can't really answer as I live in Switzerland & so the cream my dc were prescribed may not be available in the UK. It's called Essex & made by Essex Chemie SA, 600 Lucerne 6. It contains:
1 g de crème contient: 60 mg de paraffine, 150 mg de vaseline, conservateur: chlorocrésol.
1 g de pommade contient: 50 mg de paraffine, 950 mg de vaseline.

TBH Aveeno was the only cream that helped DS's skin whilst Aqueous cream made it much worse. You need to definately not bath him so often so that the skin can produve its own oils. My GP said sometimes you have to try lots of different creams til you find the right one for your child. Good luck.

Yes that's right. Use in combination with hydrocortizone.

My dc were so badly afflicted that the paed referred us to a dermatologist. Poor little things, how they suffered!

we have found aveeno cream to be excellent for our ds when several others did nothing/ made it worse. i think it is all v individual though. we give him baths v rarely - in fact till about 6 months he only had a bath about once a week and bottom/ face got washed with cotton wool and water. we have a bath additive now called Balneum which seems to work well for him when Oilatum did nothing. So as i said, it varies and you just have to keep trying...

maybe asked to be referred now as waiting list can be long. or go privately and see a dermatologist (we did in the end, but waited a year whilst trying different remedies!).