Eczema in 1 year old

[TunaJacket]

My DS is 1 in just a few days and he came out with eczema all over his torso, back and inner elbows after going in a salt pool 😭

The doctor gave him hydrocortisone 1% which we used for a few days and the redness went away so we stopped and it came back almost straight away. Weve now been using it again for almost a week and it has cleared up again but you can still see where it was because it’s slightly discoloured/dry still. Can I stop now or do I keep going until it’s completely gone?

Also, anyone whose children have had eczema. Any advice on the best way to keep it away? His dad has (poorly managed 🙄) eczema and I want to do what I can to stop him suffering too.

Just to add… I have sent a message to my doctors to ask this question but as it’s not urgent I’m not expecting a reply for a few days and I don’t want to keep using a steroid unnecessarily (but also don’t want to stop too early and it come back again!)

The advice given to us for DD2 was to keep going for a few days after the redness had gone, and to then do a few days of steroid every other day, tapering down rather than going cold turkey as it were.

Have you got a good emollient for him (where good in this case means 'that works well for him', as eczema is so individual)? That's what's going to treat the dryness (when DD2 has a flare up, the emollient goes on the patches every nappy change, and any other random times I can manage it) and also the best preventative. I think most people also find bathing only when necessary, using an emollient to wash with rather than soap (not sure all are suitable for this, but a fair number are), and slathering on the emollient after a bath all help.

I agree with above. Get some stronger moisturisers and emollients as well as the hydrocortisone. You can also get something called eumevate to help with the itch. Get the doctor to prescribe something for the bath or you can try an oat bath to help sooth the skin? If you use a fabric softener stop, and always do an extra rinse on clothes. If you can look for clothes that are 100% cotton or close to.

I can preach all this and we do it all for DS but his is still bad, but myself and his dad were the same at his age and we think we'll just have to wait it out till the warmer weather when the heating goes off.

Thank you both for your advice!

@skkyelark we have cetraben ointment. I’m not too sure if it works well for him cause it came back so quick when we stopped the hydrocortisone last time but that could have been that we stopped too soon, rather than it doesn’t work. What emollient do you use?

@edin16 is an oat bath literally just a bath with oats in it?

thanks again!

Cetraben is the first emollient they like to try, I think – it brought DD2 out in spots, so we quite quickly moved on to QV. What's your routine with the cetraben? You need to do it pretty often and be quite generous with the cream. We do full body twice a day as a preventative, and then any patches or high risk areas more often, 5-6 times a day, and I don't think that's particularly extreme.

The other thing to note is not to do steroid cream within about 30 minutes of applying emollient or vice versa.

For an oat bath, yes, literally oats in a lukewarm bath, but if you make a bag for them with the foot cut off old tights or similar, it's less messy. Grinding up the oats first is also supposed to help, I think so more of the soothing stuff gets into the water.

Frequency of emollient use is very important. I was guilty of not using it enough (because honestly it's really hard work putting cream on about 6 times a day!). When I got worried about using too much steroid, and upped the emollient to 6 times a day, I saw a real difference after about a week.