Child Eczema

[MumOf2Here]

I wonder if anyone can help or grant some advice?
My son is now 2 and when aged 6months, he began to develop eczema. Started off as just dry skin which we were keeping ontop of it with Cetraben from the GP. As time went on it progressively got worse and we were using hydrocortisone along side the cetraben.
I ended up back at the GP as I didnt find this cream was helping any longer. He was referred to a specialist nurse by the time he was 1 years old, (who never saw him face to face) pics were sent of his skin via whatsapp and they would grant advice / prescribe if needed based on those. We eventually were given Hydromol ointment which helps most of the time but not always and currently using hydrocortisone as of when its needed.

Hes 2 now however and its still very on and off. He has crazy flare ups sometimes which endup infected and on antibiotics.

Currently, its flared up again, not sleeping at all which means none of us are sleeping well. ( i have another 5 year old
son to also keep up with) Im just so sick of it and i just find nothing is helping.

Iv kept a food diary as per GP advice and cant find anything that does triggers it. The Dr said there’s no point in doing an allergy test as we dont know if he is allergic to anything?
I feel like its really affected his growth, sleep and eating cause of the eczema.

Any advice? just really struggling and out of ideas on what to do next. Just praying its something he grows out of with age.
Thanks in advance x

We had similar from 6 months vastly improved by cutting out dairy and soya, seems to be cmpa. GP said viruses can cause flare ups due to immune system being activated.

Food diaries won't help if the food is constant in your diet i.e. you eat it at least once a week, because it takes a few days for the symptoms to show. If you're eating it constantly it's impossible to see it flare.

I would do dairy egg and soya free for a month. For us it was eggs causing eczema and my DS went from being covered in weeping sores to clear skin in under 2 weeks when we removed it. If was remarkable.

Once you've done a month and if it has died down bring back soya for 2 weeks, the dairy and so on.

Thank you for this, didnt think it would take longer to show.
Is it best to just take all of them out their diet at once or one at a time?
Will try this over the next month and fingers crossed, we find what’s causing it soon xx

Thank you for your reply. Going to try what OP suggested as well and cute out dairy, eggs and soya and slowly reintroduce. fingers crossed we find a solution soon xx

Ask for a referral to allergy as well as derm. You may need to escalate - when my DD was 3 we went right up to elocon to get on top of it and that was a game changer. She still has milk and egg allergy at 5.5 but it slowly improving on the ladders on both

Escalate steroids I mean - eumovate did nothing for my daughter but elocon did the trick

I think you need to be cautious about cutting out foods, but that's just from my experience.

We were referred to a immunology/allergy specialist when my daughter was around 1 after being under dermatology since she was 8 weeks old. They told us unless she was having anaphylactic reactions not to exclude from her diet (she was having widespread hives and required antihistamine to help them go). As the risk of cutting it out is causing more severe allergies.

It's tricky with eczema and foods as it isn't always obvious what might trigger it, and because they are often delayed reactions it makes diaries hard because how do you know it was the eggs, tomatoes, strawberry etc they had the day or two before and not some pollen they came into contact with.

With the sleep, it depends on what is happening with his sleep. If he's itching and that's causing him to wake, discuss antihistamine for night time with GP, look at reapplying the creams in the night, room not being too hot, light bedding, types of PJ's (we have a combination of scratch sleeves and another brand that keeps her hands away and she can still escape these if she really wants to itch).

I'd second getting GP to refer to derm, they can look at a proper treatment regime to manage any flare ups, emollient on its own won't get it under control and there may be topical treatments they can discuss (my daughter's currently on tacrolimus protopic and has been since she was a baby off licence).

No offence to GPs, but they aren't great at managing moderate or severe eczema and that's why there are specialist dermatologists to treat.