My son used to have severe eczema, but now it's all history. Below is what we did which worked on him. Hopefully this provides some pointers to some worried parents:-
Food:-
(1) We took our son to do a allergy test at which they basically did some form of blood test, and found out foods that he is allergic to. In our case, we found out that he is allergic to chocolate (artificial ones especially Dairy Farm chocolate ice-cream, he will get a fever straight after if fed), nuts.
(2) This is an old wise tale, but we also avoid giving him "seedy" fruits, eg, strawberry, kiwi, papaya...better safe than sorry!
(3) Tried to avoid MSG. We found out that the soya sauce in Steam Fish dishes is extremely bad.
(4) Formula wise: Nan HA
(5) My grannie insisted on this, and somehow, it worked like a miracle (maybe a combination of everything though)....use barley water in lieu of water when preparing the formula from time to time (ie once a week, once every other feed...entirely up to our convenience)
Bathing and Moisterising:-
(1) Make sure water is not too hot (very important!)
(2) We used Cetaphil (a non-soap bathing liquid available at Mannings and Watsons) to wash hair and body
(3) after using Cetaphil, we poured Pinetarsol solution (anti-itch) and baby oil into bath water and soaked baby for a little while (also available at Mannings and Watsons)
(4) then we immediately dried baby with warm towel and smeared E45 cream (only available in UK, we got ours from Boots) all over baby's body.
(5) Used Elidel (prescription necessary) only ever so thinly everyday until baby's ecszema got clear. Then we only use it whenever extremely intoralable bad patches appear again. (Don't be afraid to use it everyday at the first instance, it's better than starting and stopping and changing the treatment<-won't get better)
(6) Bathe him once a day, no more, no less
General envoironment:-
(1) Keep surroundings as dust-free as possible, only limit to a couple of soft toys around baby
(2) Dressed baby with 100% cotton undershirt
(3) Winter - we would rather dressed the baby a bit more, rather than turning on the heater, especially at night (dry up skin)
(4) Summer - we avoided dressing him too much (damped clothings soaked with sweat may be bad as well)
(5) Laundry - we seperated baby's clothes from other members of the hosehold, and used baby laundry liquid (available at ParkNShop, Wellcome etc)
(6) We also got some very mild anti-histamine from baby's doctor which we can feed baby with, whenever we think that ezcema is "coming back".
Hope the above work for your little ones too! Good Luck! Remember, during the "change of weather" time..like now....eczema is prone to appear. But it will get better once the weather stablise, so don't get too worried...
Food:-
(1) We took our son to do a allergy test at which they basically did some form of blood test, and found out foods that he is allergic to. In our case, we found out that he is allergic to chocolate (artificial ones especially Dairy Farm chocolate ice-cream, he will get a fever straight after if fed), nuts.
(2) This is an old wise tale, but we also avoid giving him "seedy" fruits, eg, strawberry, kiwi, papaya...better safe than sorry!
(3) Tried to avoid MSG. We found out that the soya sauce in Steam Fish dishes is extremely bad.
(4) Formula wise: Nan HA
(5) My grannie insisted on this, and somehow, it worked like a miracle (maybe a combination of everything though)....use barley water in lieu of water when preparing the formula from time to time (ie once a week, once every other feed...entirely up to our convenience)
Bathing and Moisterising:-
(1) Make sure water is not too hot (very important!)
(2) We used Cetaphil (a non-soap bathing liquid available at Mannings and Watsons) to wash hair and body
(3) after using Cetaphil, we poured Pinetarsol solution (anti-itch) and baby oil into bath water and soaked baby for a little while (also available at Mannings and Watsons)
(4) then we immediately dried baby with warm towel and smeared E45 cream (only available in UK, we got ours from Boots) all over baby's body.
(5) Used Elidel (prescription necessary) only ever so thinly everyday until baby's ecszema got clear. Then we only use it whenever extremely intoralable bad patches appear again. (Don't be afraid to use it everyday at the first instance, it's better than starting and stopping and changing the treatment<-won't get better)
(6) Bathe him once a day, no more, no less
General envoironment:-
(1) Keep surroundings as dust-free as possible, only limit to a couple of soft toys around baby
(2) Dressed baby with 100% cotton undershirt
(3) Winter - we would rather dressed the baby a bit more, rather than turning on the heater, especially at night (dry up skin)
(4) Summer - we avoided dressing him too much (damped clothings soaked with sweat may be bad as well)
(5) Laundry - we seperated baby's clothes from other members of the hosehold, and used baby laundry liquid (available at ParkNShop, Wellcome etc)
(6) We also got some very mild anti-histamine from baby's doctor which we can feed baby with, whenever we think that ezcema is "coming back".
Hope the above work for your little ones too! Good Luck! Remember, during the "change of weather" time..like now....eczema is prone to appear. But it will get better once the weather stablise, so don't get too worried...