I noticed my daughter, Kate, had eczema around 6 to 9 months old, mostly on her legs. I had it as a child and my mom took care of it by not letting my skin come in contact with certain soaps, like in regular detergent and bubble bath. My reaction was purely based on topical contact and I could treat the occasional flare-up with Hydrocortisone. So, obviously, that's what I tried first. We use the perfume-free and dye-free laundry detergent and Eucerine bath soap/shampoo on her. Nope, didn't take care of the eczema, but didn't make it worse, either. I may even still have some of the millions of bottles of bath-soap and shampoo I’ve tried over her brief lifetime. Even the lotions were a problem, she’d howl anytime a lotion with even the slightest hint of alcohol touched her skin.
A friend of mine from playgroup is a Naturopathic Doctor and she mentioned it could be a reaction to a food. Typically when I think of food allergies, I immediately go to anaphylaxis, EpiPens, and peanut-free lunch tables. Nope, food allergies can have other, milder, effects on the body, like eczema!
So when she opened her practice (Kate was about 2 ½ by then) I made an appointment to get to the bottom of the eczema problem. I realize I could also go to my regular pediatrician about the eczema problem, but so far all they’d recommended was the sensitive soaps I was already trying and by this time Kate hadn’t sat through a doctor’s appointment without shrieking like a monkey any time the doctor or nurse even so much as looked at her. My friend, however, was someone she knew in a friendly context and just as I’d hoped, she had no problem letting the new doctor examine her skin.
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