For the most part, we can handle whatever life offers us. We suck up the obstacles and figure out what we need to do. We can pretty much endure anything. We take our medicine, apply our salves, banish everything with perfumes and dyes and additives. We lather up with fragrance free, medicinal eczema soap, swallow nasty-tasting medicines. When setbacks and health issues plague our babies, all bets are off. We would prefer to suffer and spare our children. Since such a thing is impossible, we throw ourselves into solving their problems for them. I have a daughter who began having extreme eczema from the age of about a year old. I want to share what I learned so that all parents can spare their children some of what we learned the hard way.

My daughter’s eczema was extreme. Left her sheets bloody extreme. Couldn’t wear clothes extreme. One day, I took her to a grocery store that had just done a little painting. Within twenty minutes, my baby was bright red, swollen, wheezing, and crying. I left the grocery store, cart in the aisle, terrified she was going to stop breathing. I saw the pediatrician. She recommended a specialist. We saw him. He reached for a prescription pad. It shouldn’t come as an enormous surprise that the nasty, gasoline smelling liquid I had to force my daughter to drink three times a day did little to help her eczema. Another trip back to the specialist produced yet another prescription. Now, I had to tell my 18 month old daughter that she had to avoid the sunlight. Of course, this prescription was just as ineffective as the last.

At some point, I had enough. It was probably the day that the creeping crud, as we began to call eczema, began to creep onto that beautiful little face, a face now marred with oozing lesions. I’d had it. We consulted alternative practitioners. I’d like to say that the story ended there, that they were able to resolve the problem for us. Not really, but they did begin to provide us clues. We cut out certain foods in our daughter’s diet (and in ours, as we figured solidarity was important). Table sugar was out. No peanut butter, canola oil, or hydrogenated anything was permitted in the house. Our house was also cleaned of anything with perfumes or dyes. We shelled out a little more money for skin products that were about as allergen free as one could get.

What puzzled us immensely was that, though we were able to keep our daughter’s skin from bleeding by now, we could seem to keep it moisturized. Everything that seemed to work would cease working after about two weeks. We finally realized that products that we put on her skin would be somewhat absorbed. Then, the body would begin to see the new ingredient as a foreign invader and build antibodies against it, as if it were an allergen and her lesions would begin again. It was frustrating.

After several more months of trial and error, we discovered olive and coconut oil. Thankfully, this provided the beginning of long term relief. Olive oil is rich with antioxidants and is able to act as a humectant without causing an allergic reaction. Coconut oil, too, is a humectant, but, more importantly, also provides antibacterial properties. Both are found in Bella soap, which wasn’t around when we were experiencing all this but has now become a family staple. Within a couple months, my daughter’s skin began to clean up.
Eczema soap isn’t just about not using soaps without perfumes and dyes. It’s about taking care of the skin in such a way that the body doesn’t react violently so that it has a chance to heal. My daughter’s eczema is a thing of the past now. No one can tell from looking at her that her body was ever riddled with bleeding, oozing eczema lesions, and, with proper care, no one ever will.