Babies Eczema and Grandmas Dog?

[JoanGirardi]

My son suffered from eczema too, and it's no fun trying to figure it out. The things that seemed to help--1)shower or a good rinse after swimming, because the chlorine was a killer. 2)Using Cetaphil soap in his bath. Even Dove for sensitive skin irritated him, but the Cetaphil at least didn't make it worse. 3)Double rinsing his clothes in the wash, no matter what detergent we used. 4)Lotion, lotion, lotion. We couldn't use any cleaning products or sprays that had any kind of smell to them---if it had a smell, you could be sure that it had an extra chemical and his skin would react to it.

Take heart. You'll figure out that some things work better than others, and chances are he'll grow out of it at some point. My son's skin is beautiful now, and I never could have pictured that when his eczema was so bad when he was younger.

 

[left210]

DS1 has had eczema ever since he went off breastmilk at around 2 months old. Our dr. just kept telling us that some babies have eczema and then he started having respitory issues and ended up in ICU for asthma. After that we had him allergy tested and found out he was allergic to milk, eggs, nuts and fish and other things like grass, dust mites, trees, ragweed, etc. You will probably see some of my posts about this on the DIS. For us we have found his eczema is clearly related to his food allergies. I am sure other things can make it flare but for now since he has been off of milk it clears unless he has something that he cannot eat. For instance it flared with peas and soy so he is off those now too. On another thread I recently posted that our allergist prescribed cutivate cream that works wonderful and quickly on the redness. The only over the counter cream we could use was Cerave. Cetaphil make DS eczema worse. Also, allergist recommended using lard to seal in the moisture as it does the same thing as aquaphor and is so much cheaper. It works. We do that at night. Good luck with it and my main recommendation is to just have him tested. It is hard to see them cry at such a young age but they do forget it. My oldest son was tested at 2, 4 & 6 and now as an 8 yr old the only time he remembers is when he was 6 so do yourself a favor and do it at a young age so you know what his triggers are.