Share your tips for how to manage children’s eczema with La Roche-Posay

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Eczema is a common skin condition amongst children and at times can be very tricky to manage and keep your child’s skin from being dry, sore, and itchy. It can be especially difficult to keep in check at night and can affect your DCs sleep. La Roche-Posay would like you to share your tips for how you handle your child’s eczema or what has helped you manage your child’s eczema in the past.

Here’s what La Roche-Posay has to say: “Here at La Roche-Posay we understand how eczema can impact quality of life for your child and the whole family. We ran a clinical study which showed that 9 out of 10 children with eczema suffer with sleep issues, spending up to ¼ of the night scratching, which can easily take its toll on day-to-day life. As we are committed to a better life for sensitive skin, we are encouraging Mumsnetters to share their top tips on looking after their children’s dry, itchy or eczema-prone skin, including bedtime hacks to reduce itchiness during the night.”

So what things have helped manage your child’s eczema? Are there any particular creams, lotions, or balms that have worked particularly well at soothing the itch? Do you keep the window open at night and make sure your child is wearing light, loose pajamas to keep them cool and stop them scratching while they sleep? Perhaps you avoid scented washing detergent to prevent your child’s skin from flaring up?

Please share your tips for coping with your child’s eczema below and you will be entered into a prize draw to win a £300 voucher of your choice (from a list).

Thanks

MNHQ

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To be honest, and to paraphrase my dermatologist, finding a cure for intents itching is considerably challenging. What may work for one, may not work for another.
For me, Ultraveen, Lavender oil and coolpacks seem most effective. DD finds oats in the bath, (Put inside a sock to avoid mess, and hung over tap as water;s running.)

Moisturise morning and night. Extra rinse cycle in the washing machine. Use water for bathing, and only mild cleanser when really needed. Be careful about other chemicals used around the home.

Diphrobase cream seems to work quite well with mild/moderate eczema but I am not sure how effective it would be in more serious cases.

Not having a bath every day, keeping the bedroom cool, be careful what washing powders/liquids/fabric softeners as there are several that cause flare ups and certain foods seem to have an effect also. Every child is different though.

Aveeno lotion to keep my DD's skin moisturised and steroid cream for the flare-up. Luckily I think she has grown out of her eczema stage as there are less flare-ups than before

For my Scarlett I've found trying to keep her diet as healthy, natural and as free from all the additives, preservatives etc, dressing her in cotton clothes, using natural products for washing and laundry, and lots of moisturising has helped greatly. I wish the knowledge out there now was around when I was a child and suffered badly from it, the only advice my parents were given by any doctor they took me too was to use a whole.load of medicated creams.

Avoid heavy artificially scented detergents and soaps. Sticking to natural unfragranced products seems to help.

I find washing with emollient cream helps as it doesn't seem to dry the skin like shower gel, soap etc.

Avoid limonene and moisturise, moisturise, moisturise.

Our DCs had mild eczema as babies. Oilatum emollient was good and for bad flare ups we got a hydrocortisone cream which cleared up the area quickly, but can only be used sparingly for a short period. Thankfully all grew out of by toddler age.

Mild laundry detergent and luke warm bathing with setaphil

100% consider whether diet could be causing/contributing to it. Treating the cause not the symptoms was the case for us. He still has it but it was far worse with dairy in his diet.

We've found that avoiding products with lots of additional ingredients like scents/perfumes has helped. It's really hard trying to identify triggers that make it worse- bath products and washing powders especially. He doesn't have a bath everday as that seemed to make flare ups worse.
Fortunately, DS has only really had mild eczema, my heart really goes out to poor families that really suffer from it :( It's awful to see your kids suffering and that feeling of helplessness when nothing seems to work for them

be careful wtih fabrics - it can cost more, but keep an eye on which fabrics are kinder to DC's skin and try to stick to those.

We moisturize and use the most gentle stuff in the bath though to be honest I still find it tough to control. I had it badly as a child and only prescription creams worked for me

Childs Farm cream

I have a girl suffering from eczema. When I see it starts, I make her a bath with ‘kaliumpermanganat’ so it shows with some orange color all the areas of her body affected and I can use some cortison cream (given by her doctor) in those areas. I use it twice per day for a week snd then once a day for another week. To help the skin to not become dry we apply a cream with carbamide after the cortison and we use that cream twice per day every day. Usually this help the eczema to come back less often. In addition, if we go to the swimming pool, we use a total-body swim dress and under a very fat cream to protect the skin.

She is 2 years old and she has it since she is just some months old

For washing clothes just detergent for babies, just cotton on skin (no wool in contact), be properly dressed for the temperature you have, eating well (no prepared food), avoiding food with a lot of istamin and trying to enjoy everything we can ;)

moisturiser is your eczema friend

We use Child's Farm body lotion. It's brilliant, which surprises me as it's citrusy so you'd think it'd stings but it's lovely and soothing as well as smelling great.

DD6 we used to use Dream Wash and Cream from Lush but they stopped making the wash so now use Radox shower gel (the white one) as DH and I use it and we have eczema and it doesn't exacerbate it. Dream Cream we now don't bother with and she uses DH's Vaseline Intensive (the white one) as the aloe vera one didn't suit her.

DD3 we use Aveeno (which makes DD6's worse) and 0.5% hydrocortisone cream. DD3's was milder at birth but it more persistent. DD6 rarely needs hydrocortisone now but DD3 gets patches on the top of her hands/wrists.

I used Pure Potions ointment on my son's eczema. It was also good on his thumb when it got all wizened from being sucked!

DS has thankfully mostly outgrown his eczema which used to be awful, all over his face, ears legs and arms.
We still moisturise every day using Weleda baby oil and Neals Yard base body lotion.
Only bathes once a week, the rest of the time it’s just a strip wash.
Nails always kept really short - any sign of the white bit and the clippers come out.
Lots of things to minimise sweating:
Clothes are natural fibres only.
Bedding is cotton and duvet and pillow has a natural down filling.
Weirdly though, when the weather is hot he tends to wear long sleeves and trousers because it stops the skin to skin contact in the elbow and knee creases that always starts the scratching off.
Clothes and bedding are rinsed twice in the machine.

We tried loads of creams before we found the right one, we use aquafor which is oil based, we found before that water based creams caused flare ups to often be worse or didn't make any difference. We now just use cream as and when needed so summer months we always need it more. The key with pajamas is comfiness for my kids so not too close fitting and a soft material and not seams in uncomfortable places.
I spent a long time trying different soaps to find one that they like and that their skin likes too, I also don't wash their hair more than once a week and sometimes go longer as one has lots of problems with his scalp. This helped.