How We Found the Root Cause of Our Baby’s Eczema

Are you or a loved one suffering from eczema? Here is our story about eczema and food allergies, and how I cured my baby’s eczema. Hopefully our story will be of help to you and will save you from unnecessary suffering.

Autism, food allergies, Asperger’s Syndrome, eczema, and chronic fatigue are health issues that my family has dealt with over the past 12 years.

And over the years, I’ve repeated a number of stories to friends to

• connect with others about our lives
• share what might help others as they battle similar issues.

This is one of them.

It’s the story of how our son’s eczema basically terrorized our family for the first year of our life with him.

And how we beat it with God’s help.

It was a very tough road, but I hope our trials and what we learned are a blessing to someone else.

Signs of Health Problems Starting

My oldest son was born at home.

His birth was rough but amazing. Things started out well.

He nursed well, taking to breastfeeding like a champ.

I still remember our first nap together: mother and son. lying close, me sleepily drinking in the newness and bliss of motherhood.

But all of that changed about 3 months later.

We knew from the beginning that our son was “intense”, but he soon became an insomniac.

I wrote about sleep struggles in my post on Natural Sleep Help for Children (and Adults but this was a whole different level of bad.

Things became so terrible that my son wouldn’t sleep for more than half an hour at a time.

And at nighttime, he would only sleep for 10 of those half-hour stints at a time, which meant 5 hours of sleep disrupted 9 times.

Mom was a complete mess.

We tried:

• Tying his crib next to our bed in sidecar fashion
• Having him sleep in a bouncy seat with the motor turned on
• Putting him to sleep in his car seat so he’d be surrounded by tight cushions

I was even eyeing a gadget that you attach to the baby’s crib to make it feel like the baby was riding in a car.

But the reviews weren’t consistent enough to justify the price on our then $13,000 per year income, so I passed.

I was at the end of my rope. No sleep and a very irritable baby make for a rough life.

The Rash Begins

Then my son developed what we and his pediatrician thought was a cradle cap on his head and eyebrows.

We tried several natural treatments, but it just progressed all over his eyebrows and then down to his cheeks and beyond.

So we were referred to a dermatologist who told us that he had eczema and was itching terribly.

(After hearing this, my husband and I remembered that our son would lie on his back in his crib and rotate his arms around his face in a strange way. Now we knew that he was itching horribly and trying to scratch himself. Oh, the pain of knowing your child has been suffering and you didn’t even know it.

The prescription for topical steroid cream came, and we filled it.

And on went socks on his hands when he slept to prevent him from scratching himself.

Part of that was to prevent infections, and part is because eczema has an itch/scratch cycle that is important to beat. The more your itch, the more you scratch, and so on. If you stop the scratching, some of the itching goes away.

My son’s skin was gorgeous for a while, and he slept fabulously, but once we were done with the prescription, the rash rebounded and we were back where we started.  

With itching and sleepless nights.  And the warnings on the cream’s insert were pretty frightening.

I was basically losing my mind.

Eventually, my son had a rash all over his abdomen, back, and even his legs.

His cheeks were oozing a crusty, yellow goo, and he would stick to my arms when he nursed.

A Cry For Help

Finally, one day, in desperation, I called Chicago Children’s Hospital and asked for an appointment with their head allergist.

What I got was horrible news.  They were booking out 3 months in advance.  I fell apart on the phone and told her that I honestly didn’t think I would make it ’til then.

Somehow, she got the department head on the phone, and a few minutes later, I had an appointment.

I got a prescription during that appointment. This time, however, the prescription was not for another cream, but something that got to the root of the problem.

Finding the Root Cause

At the time of our appointment with Dr. Paller of Chicago Children’s Hospital, our son was basically covered with eczema from head to foot: baby eczema at its worst. Literally, it was so bad that his cheeks were oozing and stuck to my arm when he nursed.

Desperate and bleary-eyed, I trudged to downtown Chicago with my sweet son in tow, hoping beyond hope for some relief.

For him and for me.

What Our Doctor Recommended

During the appointment, Dr. Paller graciously told me about what eczema is and how doctors don’t know what causes it, but that it appears to be an allergic reaction of the skin.  She told me that her preferred course of treatment was:

1.  Topical hydrocortizone using the strongest over the counter strength, twice per day, or as needed, using the lowest prescription strength only when needed.  (I don’t even want to think now of the strength of the cream that we first put on my vulnerable son’s body.)  I found the ointment preferable to the cream as it was easier to cover a small area with the ointment.  But it does cause the medicine to penetrate the skin, so consult with your doctor as to which is better for you.

2.  Warm baths daily using a really gentle cleanser for only 3-5 minutes (any longer and she said that the skin would become susceptible to even more eczema), followed by a layer of steroid cream and a moisturizing lotion.  She recommended Cetaphil. These days, I would use a pure organic cream like this Baby Body Lotion or Baby Bottom Cream. Another great idea is to put a little body oil under the cream for a moisturizing boost.

3.  For times when intense relief is needed, a warm, damp cloth wrap, followed by more hydrocortisone cream.

I was concerned about the hydrocortisone use, especially for baby eczema, but Dr. Paller said something to the effect of “We’ve been using these creams for over 40 years.  Yes, there is a slim chance of a negative effect on your son, but not getting sleep is for sure going to damage him and this is much less risky.”

Balanced and sage advice.

As a side note, allergies were definitely a problem genetically for my son.  A little history:

I had been almost debilitated by seasonal allergies in my high school and college years.

In high school, I stayed home for 6 weeks out of the year, having school assignments brought to my home so that I could complete the work and stay on course.  (The only thing that I did go in for was biology since that class was so demanding.)

Baby Eczema and Breastfeeding

I asked Dr. Paller about whether our son’s eczema could be related to food.

Her answer? About 30% of eczema seemed to be food-related.

So I asked my next question: how would I figure out if foods were the cause?  I’d suspected we were dealing with food allergies from flares I’d seen my son have after I’d eaten certain foods, but how would I know?

Dr. Paller said that because our son was too young to try IgE allergy tests, we’d have to do an elimination test where I’d remove probable allergens from my diet and see how he responded.

There were 6 top food allergies that should be considered (NOTE: now there are 8 top food allergens: milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy, and wheat).

Our Food Allergy Test

She recommended removing each potential allergen for 3 weeks to see how my son’s eczema responded and then add it back in and try the next one.

The next question that I had both changed our lives and brought us real hope.

“What if he’s allergic to more than one food?”  I asked.

She said that was possible.

What I couldn’t afford was 18 more weeks of itching and 30-minute stretches of sleep.  What if he was allergic to 2 or 3 things and just removing them individually out of his diet didn’t heal him and we ended up after 18 weeks just where we started?

So I asked her if it would be fine to remove all 6 potential allergens out of my diet for the recommended 3 weeks to see what happened.

She said that nutritionally, that would be fine.

Food Allergy Test Results

So that’s what I did.

Tough work.

But my son’s skin cleared up gradually as my elimination diet progressed.

We continued with the treatments of hydrocortisone and baths.  They were tiring, but at least I was getting a little more sleep as my son felt some relief.

Basically, I eliminated all the obvious sources of the Top 6 allergens out of my diet, but noticed slight to fairly bad flares even from me just eating milk chocolate. So out went everything from my diet.  I was scouring labels and making sure I ingested nothing that my son was allergic to.

Baby Eczema Healed

The result? His skin became almost perfect.

The next test was to add the foods back, one at a time.

It soon became pretty obvious that we were dealing with allergies to dairy, peanuts, and eggs.

At 5 months of age (the earliest age at which IgE blood tests are typically performed), my son ended up in the hospital with rotavirus (that’s another story as well) and since they were drawing blood anyway, we decided to try an IgE blood test.

The verdict?

Allergic to dairy, egg white, and peanut.

After all of these elimination tests and IgE test results, the question became:

Should I restrict my own diet and continue to breastfeed my son?

Or should I just go the “easy route” and put my son on soy-based formula?

My son’s wise pediatrician warned against the formula route.  Given my son’s sensitive constitution, he cautioned that it was quite possible that he would develop an allergy to soy, and then we would be forced to either make our own homemade formula or go on a “pre-digested protein formula” that cost about $80 per week.

Again, wise advice.

I decided to go the “hard route”:

• eliminating everything containing anything on the allergen list
• reading tons of labels
• learning all the derivatives of dairy, egg, and peanuts.  There are a LOT.

This was so hard for me. I really like eating (who doesn’t?) and I like having what I want when I want it.

But I really wanted to breastfeed my child, and my mother’s sense told me that while the nutritional aspect of nursing was important, the bonding aspect of nursing was crucial as well.

Later, true to our pediatrician’s advice, our son was also diagnosed with tree nut and sesame allergies, and even soy.

Later, he outgrew the soy allergy and eventually recovered from his egg and dairy allergies too.

Years later, we found out more about him, which made us glad I nursed him as long as I did.

It turned out that he had much more going on than just the food allergies and itchy skin.

Beneath the surface lay autism/Asperger’s Syndrome, a condition that I (along with many experts) am convinced originates in the mind and gut.

I truly think that my choice to breastfeed my son may have kept him from either worsening Asperger’s or even full-blown autism.

I’ll never know, this side of heaven, but I’m glad I made the sacrifice to give up food in order to nourish our son’s body and soul.

Note: this is not meant to be a criticism of mothers who have chosen to opt for formulas instead of a restricted diet.

But it is meant to encourage those who are dealing with eczema to look at diet as a possible cause, and to also consider how important breastfeeding is for your child.

The benefits of breastfeeding for babies are great and there are many breastfeeding benefits for moms as well.

For more of our family’s health struggles and victories, you may want to read:

• Natural Autism Healing and the Best Treatment of All
• Natural Autism Healing (Monster Included!)
• Just Tired or Is it Something More?
• Could You Have Heavy Metal Poisoning and Not Know It?
• Just a Red Face – or Something More?

Has your family had to deal with eczema and/or food allergies?