Less than a month old Maya, with the most perfect skin, which we have thankfully returned to now.
A few months ago, right around Christmas, Maya developed eczema basically all over, for the first time ever. She had it in her crelbow (the crease in her elbow), behind her knee, behind her neck and then a different kind of eczema alllll over her entire back with tiny little bumps. She itched at the smaller spots but the entire back bothered us more. She went from having such smooth skin to neither of us really wanting to touch it. How sad is that? Here’s how we fixed it, in case anyone else has a baby or toddler with similar eczema symptoms and hasn’t tried these ideas yet.
Our pediatrician basically said all kids in Houston get eczema, which wasn’t terribly helpful. But, what was helpful was his recommendation for two products – Basis soap at the end of the bath and Vanicream lotion straight after, all over.
So we coupled that with a bunch of what I figured out from googling and the first one was super important and I think the key to actually curing her eczema so that it’s completely gone: we took her off almond milk. We’d put her on almond milk around Christmastime because I was testing the theory that she had a dairy allergy that was causing her to overproduce mucus every time she had a cough. She didn’t drink tons of the almond milk until she started going to daycare and they really push the whole “milk” thing so she was actually drinking two full cups or more just while she was there.
At one point I clicked on something online about eczema being caused by food allergies, namely dairy, nuts and eggs. Whoops. So then we took her off almond milk (now she drinks coconut milk instead and doesn’t mind at all), she was already off cow’s milk and tried to limit the rest of her dairy and eggs. We lathered on the lotion and I replaced our laundry detergent with a fragrance free version.
That was probably in March, and within a month her eczema was 75% gone. Now it’s 100% gone.
This is definitely a totally boring post for most of you, but when I was trying to figure out how to get rid of the eczema at the height of it, I was terrified she was stuck with it forever. I’d heard a lot of horror stories (the son of a woman in my moms’ group scratches his eczema until it bleeds which sounds horrific) and I’d heard a lot of people say their kids also had regular bouts of eczema and it was something to be more managed rather than cured. Well, let this be one story of a cure. Check those allergy categories in case that could help, and try that soap and lotion. I’m sure that’s not the reason for all eczema in all kids but I know many people who have their kids on almond milk for dairy intolerances and maybe that’s playing a role.
Back to less boring stories tomorrow, I hope!
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