Eczema and dry skin - help!

[MELIWHITE]

hello,

Am now 3 months pregnant, and since becoming so, I have developed realy bad Eczema on my arms. I have never suffered from this before, and most creams you can use arn't possible to use during pregnancy. Does anyone have any advice or helpful hints as it is so itchy and painful it is driving me mad!

Thanks

Go to see your doctor and get some emolients to use on the skin and to put into the bath. Stop using soap and onlt use emolients, and that should help a bit. It is worth going to the doctor as some of the better bath preparations can be expensive if you buy them from the pharmacist. Oh, and biological washing powder always starts my family off, so try stoping that and see if it helps. Also avoid fabric conditioners.

HTH

Message withdrawn

We go through pots of aqueous cream in this house and we find it excellent. It is also great for taking the make up off at the end of the day!

My teenage son has eczema on various bits of skin, it comes and goes but we found recently that Nelsons Calendula cream does a good job of shifting it - have also read that Kamillosan helps.

(I also wash his clothes separately from the rest of the family's, with Surcare liquid and fabric conditioner, as Ariel was making it worse and worse.)

E45 cream and lotion always sorts me out ! You may also need some stuff from the doctors - I had something like Fucidin which helped a lot.

I get very dry and cracked skin on my hands and find Lotil English Weather cream is really good, lovely and thick, and not an irritant.

A friend of mine developed very bad eczema when pregnant and I think her GP was able to prescribe a very low dose hydrocortisone cream which was OK during pregnancy.

Having sent an e-mail round work for suggestions on ds' eczema as I didn't want to use a steroid cream I can offer a few suggestions : E45 (Junior) cream with a drop of pure lavendar oil, a cream with a high percentage of aloe vera in it (one girl swears by the Banana Boat aftersun lotion) and the one that has worked miracles on ds' eczema is Allergenics which I got from Holland & Barrett. In just over a week it has cleared up two patches of eczema which were weeping and bleeding. I'm sending a tube over to my niece, I really recommend it. HTH.

meliwhite - haven't had this myself, but dd has it, and I would guess you shoudl be able to use whatever is soft enough for a baby. Acqeous cream is fab as a moisturiser and instead of soap (I think they actually make this in a bar like soap rather than the creamy stuff, though don't have it myself. Olive oil is also good - though you may want to use at nighttime only! Other ranges are E45 and Oilatum which does stuff specially for babies and might be worth a try before getting onto the stronger stuff

A couple of us here have used Elena Schalburg's creams for our babies on Pupuce's recommendation (I think the link is on the home page here) and I found them excellent - much better than E45 - you can search on the health topic for the old threads.