Any skincare experts out there? I'm in dire need of advice!

[BollocksToThis]

I gave birth 6 weeks ago and my poor skin's had a crap time since then - massive oedema gave way to looking wonderful (lasted about 3 days), which was cut short by tons of horrible acne, and now really dry all over but with little spots all over my chin and jawline, tons of blackheads over my nose and huge pores on my nose and parts of my cheeks.

I'm trying to exfoliate the dry stuff off while moisturising like mad but it's making the blackheads and pores look much worse

What can I do? Wait for the hormones to subside or buy stuff to fix it? Budget is, er, minimal (DS can go without gruel for a few days if necessary )

My skin was crappy after DS and what helped it massively was not using water to wash my face.

My parents sent me off for a facial and massage as a pampering treat and I got some really good advice. Mainly that my skin might be drier while I was breastfeeding because I was letting myself get dehydrated so to drink lots of water and to stop using products which might dehydrate my skin.

I had been putting on a load of moisturiser but apparently that was only clogging up my skin more and causing the spots. So I was going between extremes of drying my skin out and then loading it up with really rich cloggy products.

I now use a milky cleansing lotion from Guinot which I love, exfoliate regularly and use a lightweight moisturiser. It got a lot better almost straight away although still isn't perfect.

Interesting, will try that because I know I'm not drinking enough at the moment - thanks :)

my skin was dreadful for months post birth too - all over the place, oily, dry, spotty, flakey all in all horrible. you have my sympathies. Have you tried the Oil Cleansing Method - it is simple & quite effective & costs very little. (just google it of there are lots of threads on MN about it). It's simplicity has huge appeal, and its quite gentle & calming on the skin.

Oh & do drink lots more water too - you know that will help.