One of my good friends is battling eczema with her 6 month old, solely breastfeeding child. For anyone who has suffered from this, or had a child who suffered from it, you know how hard it can be to both cure and function with. My friend has tried different dietary measures, such as taking out dairy, gluten and soy, but her little babe keeps getting worse and is quite uncomfortable.
Different homemade lotions and such have been somewhat helpful in the past (she makes a lotion bar similar to Madeon: Lotion Bars, which many have found very helpful for this skin condition), but at this point she really needs to address the root issue. And to do that she needs to find out what that root issue is!
From my own personal reading, I know that many find relief after healing their gut on a diet, like the Body Ecology Diet, or the GAPS diet. But since I haven’t personally dealt much with this issue, I feel like I am very limited in what I can recommend. But I know that many of you have dealt with this condition with success and I am hoping you have suggestions to offer.
Would you be willing to share what has helped you and what hasn’t? We would love to hear anything and everything that you think would be helpful. Thanks in advance!
Latest posts by KimiHarris (see all)
- 2 Ingredient Peppermint Bark - December 21, 2022
- Herbal Hibiscus Lemonade (Keto, THM) - March 16, 2022
- Creamy Curry Red Lentil Soup - December 8, 2021
Gia
My son had it as an infant & toddler, sometimes quite badly. Countless doctors, dermologists, & medicines. Took on the research myself. Food allergy was the cause. In his case tomatoes. Has to do with the citric acid. Cut out the tomatoes & it went away quickly.
bobcat
I see someone mentioned tomatoes. I would also try cutting out CORN (separate from tomatoes, so she will know what the actual culprit is). I don’t have experience with eczema, but when I saw dairy, soy, and wheat mentioned in your article…..the first thing I think is, “but did you try corn?” since that is another one of the big, overused, genetically modified, can’t-escape-it foods in our society. I once got an allergy test done, and corn was the worst culprit for me.
Mom of 4 1/2
A little late with my tip, but here goes:
I use olive oil that I’ve boiled garlic in as a lotion. The oil is a top-notch natural healer for the eczema but it can cause infection. The garlic is a natural antibacterial which will inhibit infection.
I also give my babies and children “basil baths”. I bath them in water in a small tub that has about a pint to a quart of strong basil tea added. I buy the big containers of basil from Costco and use about a quarter of a cup to make the tea. I just put them in and let them play until they are tired.
I find it very tedious to try to figure out what my kids are allergic to. Improved nutrition just seems to help the problem overall.
Karen
Biotics Research has a teaching video series for professionals that I have access to because I am currently a student pursuing certification in Nutritional Therapy. This series teaches that eczema is strongly associated with Essential Fatty Acid deficiency. Even if this mom is now eating a healthy diet satisfying her essential fatty acid needs it takes 7 years to become sufficient in fatty acids if we have previously been deficient…this makes sense because every single cell membrane in the body is made from the nutrients we consume and it would also make sense that this is a process that might take some time.
Below is what Dr Mercola posted on his site today…
Eczema
A really simple, inexpensive way to relieve the hallmark itch of eczema is to put a saltwater compress over the itchy area. You’ll want to use a high quality natural salt, such as Himalayan salt. Simply make a solution with warm water, soak a compress, and apply the compress over the affected area. You’ll be amazed to find that the itching will virtually disappear!
You also want to make sure your skin is optimally hydrated. Skin creams are rarely the answer here, but rather you’ll want to hydrate your skin from the inside out by consuming high quality, animal-based omega-3 fats in your diet, such as krill oil. I also find it helpful to include a bit of gamma linoleic acid, typically in the form of primrose oil, as this works remarkably well for eczema. Products like “krill for women” are good for both sexes for this condition as they have both fatty acids.
(Plant-based omega-3s like flax and hemp seed, although decent omega-3 sources in general, will not provide the clinical benefit you need to reduce inflammation and swelling in your skin.)
Additionally, food allergies play an enormous role in eczema. In my experience, the most common offending agent is wheat, or more specifically, gluten. Avoiding wheat and other gluten-containing grains is therefore a wise first step.
Avoiding grains will also reduce the amount of sugar in your system, which will normalize your insulin levels and reduce any and all inflammatory conditions you may have, including inflammation in your skin. Other common allergens include milk and eggs. I recommend you do an elimination trial with these foods as well. You should see some improvement in about a week, sometimes less, after eliminating them from your diet if either of them is causing you trouble.
Last but not least, vitamin D in the form of sun exposure can be your best friend when dealing with eczema and other skin conditions, such as psoriasis.
Ideally, you’ll want to get your vitamin D from appropriate sunshine exposure because UVB radiation on your skin will not only metabolize vitamin D, but will also help restore optimal skin function. High amounts of UVB exposure directly on affected skin – but not so much to cause sunburn! – will greatly improve the quality of your skin.
If you can’t get sufficient amounts of sun during the winter months, a high quality safe tanning bed can suffice. A safe tanning bed will provide the optimized forms of UVA and UVB wavelengths, without dangerous EMF exposure.
Ann
My child’s eczema was caused by a cow milk allergy; however, I read an article several months ago that I passed on to a mom with a child experiencing eczema. The article recommended putting probiotic powder in to a bottle with breastmilk or in applesauce for older babies/toddlers. It worked!
Robyn O.
I don’t know how much this will help, but it was a non-dietary component of what worked for me when my son suffered from eczema. My pediatrician recommended only natural fibers for his clothing. It was quite a challenge to find anything with out a fleece lining for winter (in MT), but it did make a difference for him. I used cotton knit and flannel and layered with wool. It was bulky, but helped. I also massaged him with olive oil a few times each day, which seemed to help as well. He’s now nearly 10 years old and has totally outgrown the eczema. And still likes a good back rub;)
Mindy
Has your friend taken any antibiotics while breastfeeding? I have recently learned that my 3 yr old who had excema as a baby (and more symptoms as she has gotten older) probably has had terrible gut flora/yeast overgrowth as a result of my antibiotics during her infancy. So she’s now on probiotics and no sugar or dairy til she finishes the bottle. Best wishes to your friend!
Mary Kathryn
For us it was the water!! We live in an area that has very hard water. Getting a water softener or I bet even a water filter would help a lot. My kids also would get it when they teethed. I kind of took it as their bodies way of releasing some of the stress and would handle those cases individually. Good luck- not fun at all!!!
Debbie
My family is now on GAPS as a remedy for food allergies with symptoms that have included eczema. I can’t say enough good things about it. Switching from the standard American diet to GAPS can be a shock, but it is well worth it. Although it may not feel like it, your friend (and her baby) are lucky that the symptoms are bad enough to recognize them as a problem and take care of them now while her baby is small instead of later when conditions are worse (I know from experience). Best of luck to your friend!
Carey
A constitutional homeopathic remedy could help. For acute cases, the remedy Sulphur could help, but I would go see a homeopathic doc if the above measures don’t help. The right remedy should really help.
The mother who is nursing could try the changes to her diet listed above– eliminating tomatoes, maybe other nightshades, corn, etc but maybe one at a time?? and taking probiotics… something might be getting her through the breast milk, but those antibodies are good so it would be sad to stop nursing.
I used to get eczema every winter on the East Coast when I was wee, on my inner arms. I hated it!! It happened when the heat came on and the indoor air was warm and dry.. and the outdoor air would be cold and dry. But I think pasteurized/homogenized milk might have had a part. Raw or cultured milk, yogurt or kefir are worth trying; raw sauerkraut or pickles full of lactobacillus might help.
Oatmeal baths might be helpful. And there are homeopathic creams like Fast Heal and Calendula that might help. Best of luck to you!! Poor little dear!
Ali @thecoffeeqween
I had to cut dairy from my sons diet. Within 24 hours of switching from dairy based formula to soy it was almost completely gone and it was pretty bad. Also renew lotion by melaleuca works very well. Good luck!
Melissa
Oh, I feel for your friend. I have had eczema for 10+ years and both of my children have it too. For my 1 year old I figured out it is dairy. The poor little guy had it from about 3-9 months before I figured it out. He and I (still breastfeeding) are on a dairy-free diet and his eczema is so much better. Our daughter we have still yet to discover the problem. But we have found stuff that helps all 3 of us. Emu oil, CereVe lotion and Burts Bees fragrance free lotion. Lots of trial and error. 🙂
Jennifer M.
My son also developed eczema at about that same age, being just breastfed. It was dairy, especially pasturized milk. Cultured things seemed fine like cheese ok but I had to stop drinking commercial milk. Raw was fine though. I know lots of things can cause it though, soy, corn, wheat, etc. or even detergents or other enviromental allergies. But trying the most common things first is a good bet. Hope she finds the cause soon!
Kelsey
Evening Primrose Oil !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My son had eczema when he was little, and I did not what to go the route of creams and all the stuff so I did some research and settled on Evening Primrose Oil. I just bought the capsuls and poked a hole in them and would squeeze it into his sippy cup. The eczema went away in a week! I went through the whole bottle of primrose oil, and never bought any more and it never came back. My friend’s daughter had a very severe case of eczema, red all over bleeding terrible!! So i told her what I did and it worked as well. I hope it works for you too!!
Ingrid Danforth
How old was your son? When you gave him evening primroise oil ??
Angie
What brand of primrose oil did you use?
Beth
Please see the excellent article titled Treating Eczema by Dr Tom Cowan in the fall 2010 issue of the Wise Traditions journal.
For me, raw goat milk healed my eczema. This is a common outcome of drinking raw milk, this and healing asthma.
Shari Goodman
Yeast is a huge culprit. I have helped many little ones with a yeast treatment, probioitics and dairy free diet. There is also a great natural allergy pill for little ones to help calm down the system called A & I. My 6 year old had eczema head to toe when he was 6 mos old. He is completely eczema free after doing this treatment.
Diana McAdams
Has she tried removing eggs from her diet ? I’ve had 3 friends who all had babies who suffered from skin rashes so bad they bled and finally discovered eggs. And don’t forget that vaccinations ( many at least ) are cultured on eggs. She should ask the doctor about alternatives.
Rachel
My two daughters and my eldest son each had persistent excema as babies. For each of them, it was in a specific spot on their body and it would flare up, die down etc but always in that one spot, nowhere else. I found for both of them that around the age of 18 months-2 years it cleared up and disappeared all on its own. My youngest, who is 20 months, her excema spot is on the back of her leg and has been there consistently since she was about 3 months old. I’d been using DermaMed cream with Calendula in it but it would still flare up quite badly and it didn’t go away. It has been about a month now since the last flare up (longest time) and it’s slowly disappearing and I haven’t put cream on it in about 2 weeks.
I breastfed both all 4 of my kids exclusively and my youngest went straight from breastmilk to fresh, raw milk (she was lucky we had found raw milk before she was weaned!). We also use natural, scent free, perfume free products in our home. It was definitely a frustrating, curious thing. I’ve read that excema in babies tends to clear up around that age, and for my kids that was the case. Best of luck to your friend – I know how frustrating and upsetting it can be 🙂
waggie
My daughter had it so bad from her shoulders up. She lost all her hair and was very uncomfortable. It breaks my heart when I hear other babies going through the same thing. I found what helped was Udo’s infant probiotics. It’s a powder form and can be mixed with pumped out breast milk (or even a small amount of water and given from a medicine syringe). Also what helped was Burts Bees Apricot baby oil blend.
Jessica
I didn’t experience this with my daughter, but I would immediately remove any suspect detergents, laundry supplies (dryer sheets and fabric softener have several toxins in them), cleaners, etc. Also, does your friend wear perfume? I know this sounds odd, but my daughter (who is very sensitive to several things, food and environmental) gets a raised, red rash when closely exposed to fabric softener and certain perfumes (after hugging a relative who is wearing it, for instance). Here is a really helpful site for discerning which “natural” products are actually safe: http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/. It sounds like she has done a lot diet-wise, so while continuing to eat healthy, my recommendation would be to explore potential environmental allergens. Hope this helps!
rosyjo
I feel for those who have babies with eczema! When the first of my two sons had it and I ended up taking him to a doctor just to make sure that was what it was before treating it alternatively they said it was the worst case they had seen–and he was nothing compared to his brother when he came along!
The only way I could figure out the allergies of the first son was by restricting myself to a few foods for awhile (relatively hypoallergenic ones like rice, etc) then watching as I introduced new foods back in (all while breastfeeding him only). He had not just one but several food allergies. When I avoided these he was good. Eventually my midwife and I found a homeopathic that worked for him and later at different times I’ve taken him to a chiropractor who would adjust his ileocecal valve. The valve that goes from the stomach to the intestines. He did out grow the worst of his allergies but still has a few.
His younger brother had allergies from the start-his brother was such an experience I couldn’t believe this was happening again so I wasn’t on to it as fast as I should have. Guess the first one was the Lord’s boot camp preparing me for the second one! I couldn’t figure out his allergies fast enough and I kept running into dead ends in alternative medicine–what I could find out then. The internet was a lot younger then! The tipping point came when he got the flu bad–he went into ‘failure to thrive’ and at 6 months he was admitted to the hospital at his birth weight. This is 10 years ago. Fortunately things are a lot different now but then they refused to believe it was food allergies. I knew he had food allergies but he was so bad we thought there must be more. After getting now where for a couple weeks my husband finally requested an allergist. She took one look at him and said she’d bet the ranch that allergies were the issue. She tested just the initial big 5, as she called them–dairy, soy, wheat, egg, peanut. His scores were literally off the charts–beyond what they could even measure. Longer story short, he had to go on one of the hypoallergenic formulas at $40/can. He finally began to look and feel better. I was down to only 5 foods trying to eat something he wasn’t allergic to but he was sensitizing to everything.
One bright spot during this time was that my mom gave me a copy of Nourishing Traditions. Finally here was a nutrition guide that made sense (and I was a nutrition major!) Eventually I had babies that have much better health than these two.
If trying an elimination diet isn’t working either by eliminating chosen foods or eliminating as much as possible and slowly bringing foods back in then find an allergist. A allergist that operates within traditional medicine tends to look at the tests vs. how a child is reacting to determine official allergies (I don’t care what they call the name-my children react to it!) but it is a definite resource. In alternative medicine cortisone creams are discouraged because it suppresses the symptoms instead correcting the cause. There are too many cases of asthma later on.
We found an alternative practitioner who tests our son’s sensitivities with a computer. In one hand he holds a brass bar connected to the computer and on the other hand the practiioner touches his meridian points. This has been very accurate and very helpful because his allergies can shift so much. May you never have to go through all this!! Another help along the way was a chiropractor who gave him chiropractic adjustments coupled with acupuncture (no needles). Friends of mine got help for their severely allergic children (the Lord graciously provided us an informal support network during this time) through NAET. I wish I’d known earlier on about the EFA’s and some of the other suggestions already listed. I tried a boat load of external applications, wearing cotton, etc but it wasn’t helpful in his case.
Avoid the allergens, increase the nutrition every way you can, and if there’s something topical that comforts– how wonderful! Another factor that eventually came into play for him (he eventually outgrew the eczema but retained the allergies) was the air quality of where we lived. The more he was stressed by the air quality the more food allergic he became. Finally this year we were able to move to an area of better air quality and month by month he has made immense gains.
Sorry this is so long–I hope your friend’s child’s allergy issues are much simpler. If they aren’t I wanted to offer a bit more. The road can be frustrating and lonely, etc-
Tessa
Did this child have vaccines and could her immune system be skewed because of the vaccines? I feel vaccines was what put my child over the edge with a highly inflamed body. For my child gluten free, pasteurized dairy free and the real kicker for her was eating raw dairy. The raw dairy was like a miracle, and we are also slowly detoxing her and seeing improvement with her immune system.
deBurgh Joyce
We have found most Eczema is caused by our personal care products & household cleaners & even the ones who are trying to use safe products, because we don’t understand & it is hard to do all the research, it is hard to get it right. Convert your home to Neways Healthy Homes Products & Personal Care Products, You can go to http://www.neways.com & have a look at the great range, also use a coloidal mineral ” Feroxin” & natures antibiotic (Cows colostrum) “Transfactor”. Please contact me for more detailed help. Good luck
deBurgh Joyce.
Madeleine
My home-birthed son had eczema 3 days after birth. Turned out we had to find new homes for our cats. The food allergies showed up much later.
Beth
Raw grains freshly ground helped our family. I make a European muesli with it. Rolled oats with wheat, corn, flax, split pea,, and dried apple as a carrier. I try to soak it for a 1/2 hour with raw milk before serving it. It is not a favorite with the children so most of the time I have to make it into muesli bars. coconut oil, muesli and honey in a food processor is quick.
chilled it makes a great bar. I can tell when my daughter has not had her muesli, after a couple of days she gets eczema around her nose and mouth. Right now her doesn’t mind but when she is a teen she will.
Lisa, in NZ
Hi there,
I do a lot of my own research into herbalism and use herbal remedies often with my own kids. Until you have found out the cause, which many ideas above have mentioned, easing the eczema can be done with a few different things you already might easily find or have – Yarrow wash. Dried yarrow (25g) or fresh (50g) to 500ml boiling water, leave for 3 minutes, remove the yarrow. Cool, add 1 c water and use as a wash for your baby. Make up as needed, yarrow is a ‘weed’ that growd almost everywhere.
You could do the smae with Violas.
Use tea tree oil, diluted a little in water and apply to area.
or if it is infected ezcemz try a compress from platain leaf.
All these are very safe for children.
For more help you could try the book Complete Natural Home Remedies. K Sullivan
Hope this helps, ezcema is so not nice for babies and children. I have found in the few kids i have helped is is mainly due to refined sugars in the diet.
All the best
Lisa, in NZ
Hi there,
I do a lot of my own research into herbalism and use herbal remedies often with my own kids. Until you have found out the cause, which many ideas above have mentioned, easing the eczema can be done with a few different things you already might easily find or have – Yarrow wash. Dried yarrow (25g) or fresh (50g) to 500ml boiling water, leave for 3 minutes, remove the yarrow. Cool, add 1 c water and use as a wash for your baby. Make up as needed, yarrow is a ‘weed’ that growd almost everywhere.
You could do the smae with Violas. (Search images online if you want to pick your own)
Use tea tree oil, diluted a little in water and apply to area.
or if it is infected ezcemz try a compress from platain leaf.
All these are very safe for children.
For more help you could try the book Complete Natural Home Remedies. K Sullivan
Hope this helps, ezcema is so not nice for babies and children. I have found in the few kids i have helped is is mainly due to refined sugars in the diet.
All the best
Jill Potvin Schoff
My son was covered with rashes from the time he was about 6 weeks old. He was a mess. We tried everything. I finally stumbled on http://www.solveeczema.org/ . This website was created by a woman who figured out what was causing her son’s eczema: detergents. Detergents of all kinds, soap, shampoo, dish soap, laundry detergent, you name it. She suggested switching completely to traditionally made soap products and it made a HUGE difference. It is not easy, but the difference is amazing.
Chelsea
YES! There is SO little talk of this site. I have been struggling with my children for four years now, and it was only two weeks ago that I finally stumbled across that site. It is literally a miracle. I’ve been talking with AJ (who runs it) a lot over the past few weeks and she is just amazing. I swear, an angel! My children have incredibly severe eczema. They wake up bloody every day, are covered in infected, scabbed over and raw, bloody patches. Our whole life has been so drastically altered by this, that to finally find what I do believe to be the true cause of the majority of eczema is just incredible. I’m so happy to see someone else here mention this! I wish everyone knew of this site. The work is difficult, no way to sugar coat that. But we have tried every cream, eliminated everything except for a handful of the least allergenic foods, done every supplement, etc. All to no avail or only minimal improvement. And what’s the point of pretending it’s something it isn’t just because it would be easier if it were a food allergy.
I know my daughter is allergic to pollen and reacts strongly to tomatoes, melons and bananas (cross-reactivity, it’s fascinating), but removing those foods didn’t help her skin get better. So I knew there was much more to the story than allergies to food.
Anyway, glad to see a fellow SEO on here. 🙂
Jessie
I developed eczema while pregnant with my 5th child. It appeared on my face and got so bad that it hurt but itched at the same time. I tried as much as I could to get rid of it and finally found a couple of things that helped. I thought I might be allergic to several foods so I went on the GAPs diet. In two weeks I had almost complete relief. I then found an article in Wise Traditions. Written by Thomas Cowan, he recommended a topical cream that has worked great for me to relieve the itching. It is quite expensive, but I found it was worth it. The web site is drkangformulas.com and the product number is 49.
I later had an allergy test done and found I was allergice to wheat, dairy, gluten, rice, eggs, and several other things. I was very thankful I had already started the GAPs diet since most of these things were not allowed.
I have noticed my kids also have developed a bit of eczema as well. Diet has played a huge role!
Kendra
My family has a history of eczema and other skin problems. My skin has completely cleared up since my progression into healthier foods began years ago. I do have occasional flare ups, due to weather or the necessity of lots of hand washing, but those clear of fairly quickly with treatment.
Rently I saw a post about the madeOn hard lotion and was intrigued. I bought some to try out. My son washavinga pretty bad flare up on his hands and wrists. With the madeOn bars applied 2-3 times a day the eczema was decreased by about half in 24 hours and in 48 it was gone! I hae now purchased the ingredients to try making my own with the recipe she provides on her site!
kristin
I work at a store selling “Rescue Cream”-unscented cream with goats milk, cocoa butter, and comfrey leaf. It’s had great results on eczema.
I’ve had customers come in 1 day after purchasing the rescue cream and show me areas of eczema on their bodies that are already starting to heal-after only one day of application.
This same cream is also sold as “Baby Cream” in our store because it is gentle enough for babies or use on the face. It helps with diaper rash as well. I’m not trying to sell my product (I just work at the store and gain nothing if you order it), but I’ve seen it work for people and wanted to let you know about it.
http://www.udderdelight.com/catalog.php?category=43
Sharon
Hi! My son is 16 months old and still nursing full-time, though he eats solids as well. He started having eczema last fall. I had the most “success” with pure shea butter – great stuff! – but nothing really got read of the eczema itself, just made it somewhat bearable. It got quite bad (he would scratch himself raw on his arms, legs, & ankles, very sad to see!) until I went on a very strict diet – I eliminated most grains, egg, soy, dairy, tomato, & chocolate from my diet. Not fun! But I could still have oats, rice, millet, potatoes, nuts, meats, etc. He himself was just nursing and eating fruits, veggies, buckwheat, quinoa, millet, & potatoes. Anyways, it was worth it because he improved quite a bit! I started adding things in, not as carefully as I should have though, and it did get worse on & off for a month or two. I finally clued in that it was the egg in various things I ate that was still bothering him. Since I have been off eggs completely, his skin has been perfect & we are so thankful to the Lord!! But a week ago I had a fried egg (partly to see if this was all in my head or not) and within a day or two his face was all full of red bumps, and part of his back as well, so I had lots of people wondering what was up with him. After a few days it did clear right up & his skin is beautiful again.
So I would say that it is certainly worth it to test your baby on eggs. Amazing how much comes through the mother’s milk!
Angie
My 4 year old son has struggled with eczema. I didn’t realize until after 18 months of guesswork that I could do a blood test that resulted in a graph of his sensitivity to nearly 100 foods. I am sure there is a lot of room for error in the test, but the results were enough to totally get his condition under control and I had been completely wrong about what foods were contributing to his discomfort!
mary ann
Wheat, dairy, and eggs (the whites) are the biggest offenders. But any potentially allergenic food such as nuts, tomatoes, corn, etc. can affect things. Animals and dust mites can exacerbate symptoms. Candida can also make things worse. For us, the things that work best are taking probiotics (baby can do this too), avoiding common allergens, epsom salt/baking soda baths, raw coconut oil (ingested by breastfeeding mother to help kick candida or applied topically), avoiding processed food/sugar. It’s good to check baby soap for hidden allergens too, a lot of time there is hidden milk, soy, oats, etc. in baby products (especially the natural ones). I used a burt’s bees “milk and honey” shampoo for a month before I realized it was causing a reaction.
Raf
Eczema runs in my husband’s family, almost everyone has a moderate or severe case of it. My husband’s eczema completely disappeared since he went on the SCD diet for his IBD. If you’re not sure you can follow GAPS, you can try SCD first which is what GAPS is based on. It is very similar but the introductory stage is a little easier to follow. pecanbread.com is a good source of info.
Logan
This is so late that nobody will ever see this comment, but sometimes it’s nice to talk to an empty room. So I have an interesting little twin study on eczema in my home. My first set of twins had a somewhat traumatic birth. They were born 6wks premature, I was given IV antibiotics as well as steroids to help mature their lungs quickly, I didn’t have to have a c-section but they were taken quickly away to a NICU after birth and pumped full of more antibiotics and during their 2 wk stay they probably were given formula a couple of times. As soon as they came home from the hospital I started them and me on a course of probiotics and I breastfed. Fast forward 20 months, my second set of twins were born. My diet during pregnancy was comparable to my first, and their birth story very similar: ~6.5wks early, antibiotics, steroids, NICU, some formula. Both of their diets were similar when foods were introduced.
My first set of twins have pretty significant eczema (which started around age 1). My second set of twin are 2.5 now with perfectly clear skin. Weird right? Sure genetics might be the the cause, but when I consider what else it could have been that was experientially different for the first two and not the second I can only come up with the first twins had a bath. We moved and I gave birth at different hospitals and the new hospital doesn’t bathe the preemies in the first 24 hrs. Only recently did I start to consider this an option and I did a little reading and found that the vernix helps condition the skin in those first hours after birth and how a protective bacterial layer forms over the skin at this time. Similar to the layer found in the gut.
I’ve been wondering if there is some way to help recolonize the skin so that it becomes protective again against irritants. One suggestion I heard was giving your child a bath in epsom salts, as it helps change the skin’s PH. I’ve never heard of this remedy specifically for eczema before and am curious to see if it helps at all. We’ve run the gamut of remedies not much has helped, really if at all. It’s certainly a very frustrating condition. When you look at all these comments it’s hard to even know where to begin.
Moe
Aloe Vera
Alisha
Both of my girls had bad eczema that started when they were about a month old. My first daughter’s cleared right up with hydrocortisone cream in a day, but my second’s was much more stubborn. We tried hydrocortisone for several days, emollient creams, special soaps. Nothing worked. I bought Foderma serum as a last-ditch effort to clear her skin up, and what a difference! It worked so well, and so fast. Within 24 hours there was a marked improvement in her skin and in her temperament. We use it now on both girls, and it’s great.