Excema in young baby

My 5wk old has excema; red, blotchy, scaley, and very dry skin from the waist up. Her medical professionals say it is a lot worse than they usually see on babies this age and she has had hydrocortisone lotion this week to help clear it up. That has helped sort out the chronic stuff and we'll have a follow-up apmt tomorrow to talk about ongoing moisturising etc.

Who else has had something like this? Is aquaeous (or similar) cream enough? Did you change your diet (I am bf)? Did eliminating milk products make any difference?

Yes there's excema in the family - I had mine to adulthood and 2 out of 4 of baby's sisters still have it as well - but nowhere near the amount that Bethany has. They just have dry patches in places or particularly dry trunk, but not red.

My son had terrible excema right from the beginning and it was horrible. We got prescribed Hydrocortisone but didn't like to use it to much as they are so little. I would only use it when the rash got so bad it was splitting or getting out of control. I actually hate the Aqueous cream. I found it didn't do a thing to help either of my kids when I used it, and Samantha would scream the minute it was applied so I guess it was painful to have it on her.
My MIL sent me some lovely natural excema cream from Millstream gardens and it has done wonders to keep his excema under control. We have used it since he was very little and although it doesn't clear it completely it takes the redness/dryness away and stops it splitting.

Oh and another very important note is that we found out he is allergic to eggs. When I stopped eating them the excema improved a lot!

Edited by Mama2two

My DS had excema for awhile when he was younger and is now basically 100% cured after seeing a naturopath at Allergy Pathway in Mairangi Bay, Auckland. They found out he was allergic to dairy, salicylates and sugar and treated him in 3 treatments for this using pressure point massage. Prior to this I had taken him to the doctors who also gave us aqueous cream (the new recommendation for this is that it is only used in the bath and washed off as it is harmful to leave it on their skin as was done in the past) and hydrocortizone. I don't have to use either of these anymore. He only ever gets a few red dots on his tummy very occasionally that I don't even think is excema, no dry patches at all.

But yes, I think that excema is often a food allergy of some sort. You can also buy a probiotic powder in the fridge at the pharmacy called Excema Sheild that you take if you are bfing which may help.

Good luck, its horrible when your babys skin is all red and sore :(

The dermatologist we saw said that only 10-20% of childhood eczema is caused by food allergy/intolerance. It is far more common for the cause to be genetic, and it is linked to a family history of eczema, asthma and/or hayfever.

On derm's advice I restarted some of the foods I'd been eliminating (for 4 months) and saw no deterioration in DDs skin.

Good website (recommeneded by the derm) is dermnetnz.org

As milliemoo said, what works for one baby might not work for another...but, incase it helps...the regime that works well for us is:
lots of emulsifier in the bath, lots of moisturising (I use various things...aqueous, emollient, urea [not on open eczema as it stings]), NO soaps. Hydrocortisone made up as an ointment works better for us than the cream (it's more of a barrier) - We use hydrocortisone on face/scalp and a slightly stronger steroid, advantin, on her body. We use sparingly, but enough to reduce inflammation and prevent infection.

DDs skin is MUCH MUCH better now, she's not woken by it at night time, and we are able to maintain it with the moisturising. The produc xma-ease didn't work for us...(but is a nice moisturiser, albeit expensive!)

If you do a search on here, you'll find a few threads on eczema.    

Good luck - you'll get there with it.

I find the aqueous makes it worse, we just try to stay on top of it with steriod cream if needed very small dosesand only on the patches, and fatty cream almost every day to keep him moisturised and use nothing in the bath unless he's itchy and red we use pinetarsol. Lewis reacts to pretty much every baby wash.
He has food allergies, but they don't seem to affect his excema worse

JoJames wrote: I find the aqueous makes it worse, we just try to stay on top of it with steriod cream if needed very small dosesand only on the patches, and fatty cream almost every day to keep him moisturised and use nothing in the bath unless he's itchy and red we use pinetarsol. Lewis reacts to pretty much every baby wash. He has food allergies, but they don't seem to affect his excema worse

My little man reacted to everything in the bath too! Not that I use stuff all the time but he has 2 older brothers who love a good bubble bath and I hate to see him miss out. I have found ecostore bubble bath and Organic care 3-in-1 bodywash are great!! He doesn't react at all!!

We did to the point of open sores - we ended up moving from aqueous cream to lemnis fatty cream to an emulsifier (as the others didnt provide enough moisture) combined with steroid. We also, after seeing a specialist changed from breastmilk to neocate formula, which definately cleared the skin, and since starting solids we have noticed a direct link to egg and dairy - so we avoid both.

It started probably when DD was a few weeks old - bad baby acne, and whole torso, then grew increasingly worse till she was 4-5 months old, then started to slowly get better.

Now her skin is nearly perfect - with eruptions around her knee areas only.

Photo one is during some of her worst
Photo two is one month later (still not 100%)
Photo three is 2 months later and we havent looked back.


By zexy at 2011-02-25


By zexy at 2011-02-25


By zexy at 2011-02-25


Edited by Kimnthekids

Unfortunately dairy takes a good 2-3 weeks to get completely out of your system We noticed almost complete resolution of eczema & other symptoms within 3 weeks. (Don't forget too that unless you cut out all dairy, including everything that has milk solids, casein etc in it, changing your diet may not be as effective - you probably know that already though!)

The problem is that if it's not dairy, you end up restricting your diet for no reason, and then have to try something else etc etc. If you suspect food allergies, it would be worth getting Bethany tested for reaction. They can do a blood test (RAST) which definitively tells you what she is allergic to.

Good luck - the whole thing is a right PITA!