What I Thought I Knew About Eczema
As a first time parent I found myself in new territory. I knew nothing. During month two, my chubby cheeked angel started getting little red pimples on his face. People mentioned their children had the same around that age. The running theory was he had baby acne. I found out eczema was to blame I was worried, but hopeful. According to everyone around me, tons of babies had eczema. To solve the problem we needed to moisturize his skin and use gentle products. I never had eczema, so I needed advice from others. Half of the people I talked to made it sound like a dry skin problem. Time progressed and I knew something was wrong. The information I was getting was not helping and his problem was much more than dry skin.
“Surely this is not just eczema,” I thought as his flare-ups got worse and worse. He began to scratch himself bloody. Even with mittens on he would lay awake, crying, covered in blood. He would either take them off or rub so hard his skin would break. The first time I found him covered in blood we both cried as I washed his face. Advice from other parents who dealt with “eczema” became a slap in the face. I believed they had no clue what I was going through. No matter what they said, I knew all the moisturizer in the world could not help my child at that point. Every call and visit to the doctor felt like a waste of time. They kept telling me to be patient, and he’ll outgrow it. Which left me hoping it would go away and soon. I believed once his rash faded the problem would too. I would take home the steroid cream and in a week my baby would be better. He would outgrow eczema and everything would be fine.
What I Thought I knew About Treating Eczema
To achieve my goal I had to get everything right. I used the steroids the doctor prescribed and went back and forth on whether they were helping or hurting. Everything I knew would irritate the skin I began to eradicate. I cleaned my house like a person with OCD, got HEPA filters, and shooed the cat away if she even looked at the baby too long.
My doctor mentioned eating milk or eggs may cause a problem and I should “cut back.” He told me my baby can’t be allergic to my breast milk, so I kept breast feeding and cut back on eggs and dairy. The plan became bathing and moisturizing, since everyone else was so obsessed with it. We focused on short warm baths, soon as he got out we moisturized him from head to toe. I put aside commercial products with those pesky parabens in favor of more natural skin products. Despite the bathing, moisturizing, cleaning and not sleeping, nothing worked. I wanted to know what was causing this so that I could stop the vicious cycle. Eczema was something that all the cool kids had, but no one could tell me where it came from. I went into research mode and read every article and blog post I could while I rocked him to sleep at night.
What I Thought I Knew About Allergies
At the 6-month mark the plan changed. Reaching this milestone means you can test (more like torture) for possible allergens. An allergist gives patients something called a “prick test”. The doctor or nurse takes a little needle and pokes you with the allergen to see if your skin reacts. You’ll know you are allergic if it swells up like mosquito bite.
Our doctor asked questions and based on the answers he decided what to test for. The nurse came in a said, “poor thing” and went to work. She poked him with each needle across the back in a hurry. My son paused, it took a moment to realize what was going on, but once he did he began to scream. He could not understand why I was allowing a stranger to continually stab him in the back. We waited for the results, without touching his back that was now itching everywhere he’d been stabbed. The “poor thing” was allergic to milk, eggs, peanuts, cats, dogs, and dust mites. More pain was to come because the doctor ordered a blood test.
This time he was hysterical. This is the same boy who got his first set of shots without a single tear. Like his mama they couldn’t get the blood after the first try. They put the needle in the right place while I held him down. The technician refused to try a fourth time, so whatever they got they were going to use. One technician couldn’t hold back her own tears after. Not one tear fell from my eyes. I hadn’t cried with him since that first night of crying by his bedside with blood all over his face and his pajamas. We were close to a solution, so I found resolve. He needed to see me calm, so he could be calm. I put my forehead to his and assured him everything would be alright.
We’d already tried the strongest steroid, no steroids, antibiotics, oatmeal baths, all major moisturizing creams and the list goes on. Trying nothing and everything hadn’t worked. The blood test would tell us what components of the egg and peanut he was allergic to. It would tell us how dangerous his allergies were. We thought it would free us from eczema for good. Again I thought, for a moment, that children grow out of it. One day we’ll look back and say remember when.
The test results came back, he was allergic to all components of the egg, milk and the worst components of the peanut. For a moment I was terrified. I thought back to every itchy moment and every egg I consumed. That horrible plane ride with all the peanut dust in the air. What if I hadn’t gotten the pretzels that day?
I thought about our trip to the emergency room for a swollen lip, there was peanut butter nearby. A pimple formed right under his lip. It grew by the end of the day. I forgot about the peanut butter once the doctor told us he had an infection. Eczema. The infection was from the open wounds on his face from scratching. In truth, the peanut butter probably had nothing to do with it, but what if? Allergies. I had poisoned my child. I knew it wasn’t “just eczema.” Allergies had been the reason for all my troubles. How could no one tell me this news sooner. Why didn’t anyone say, from the beginning, that this was the reason that eczema flared-up?
What I Thought I knew About Having both Eczema and Allergies
The biggest flare-ups were caused by his biggest allergies. I stopped all consumption of milk, eggs, and peanuts. By this time I was weaning him off of the breast. I was poisoning my baby with the breast milk he was in fact “allergic” to. Of course not in the way the doctor meant, but I still felt guilty. I felt guilty for giving him “bad” breast milk and I felt bad for giving him formula. Babies with milk allergies need a formula that is “hypoallergenic.” They are much more expensive and after breast milk he hated the taste. I had to convince him to drink it by putting oatmeal in it for flavor. Yes, internet, I know the horrors of putting cereal in the bottle, but it worked.
Here’s the tip I would give everyone who asked me. Food allergies cause eczema flare-ups. Even my doctor first mentioned it as an afterthought. “A baby can’t be allergic to his mother’s milk” he’d told me. Which may be true in the way he meant it, but he can be allergic to what I was consuming. I had no real way of knowing being new to the situation and being new to parenthood. It fueled my need for more information. I couldn’t let go of the idea that I could have done something to help him sooner. From then on, I operated under the belief that allergies that caused eczema.
What I Now Know About Eczema and Allergies
I now know eczema is a chronic condition it’s always there under the skin. Eczema is not a one time rash you are dealing with. Yes, children can outgrow it, but it may take years if they outgrow it at all. Eczema describes different types of skin conditions. For example my son has atopic dermatitis it’s the most common in children. Every form and case of eczema is different. Treatment will vary from person to person.
Once we stopped the milk and egg exposure in all forms we had a new baby. The allergist prescribed an ointment for his face, and he takes an oral allergy medicine every day. He still has flare-ups, but never as intense. It’s true allergies will cause flare-ups so getting rid of allergenic foods in your diet will help, but eczema is not caused by allergies.
I thought that I could have done better if I knew more about allergies from the beginning. I couldn’t have known he was allergic to those particular foods and all their components. Having a trifecta of major allergies is rare. His eczema was warning me that there was a deeper problem. Although I was wrong to say it wasn’t “just eczema,” I was right in my gut feeling. His eczema was becoming unmanageable because I was missing information, and he had more than contact dermatitis. In our case dealing with his allergies helped tremendously.
Eczema treatment has an order to follow. We had to start with tips about dry skin before we could get to testing for allergies. We have more steps along the way, and we still may come to a day when flare-ups are a thing of the past, but I stopped focusing on that.
Clarity arrived after I began arming myself with tools that worked for me. I stopped trying to do something because you’re “supposed” to do it that way. I took risks that I thought were necessary and let go of any judgment that came along because of them. Any time I was out of my comfort zone I found something new that worked and the end result was the formula that kept his eczema at bay. Something will interrupt progress and your plans will change. In the end you will know you made it through when you can look back and say, “times were different back then.” You won’t see it until you are long down the path, so try not to worry. Do what you need to do to make today work and try again tomorrow. A large part of the formula in finding relief from eczema, allergies and everything else is letting go of what you think you know.
