Hopefully someone can help…Fin has always had really dry skin, and I have noticed that it’s getting worse. He has patches bhind his knees, on his knees, and he still has quite a lot of cradle cap on his head, but aso behind his ears. It must be bothering him now as when I undress him he claws and claws his skin and it looks like the cat attacked him :( 

I’m assuming it is probably an allergy to something-dairy maybe? I’m unsure about cutting out stuff in his diet though, and I would also have to cut it out in mine too…

In the meantime though, what can I soothe his skin with? I have been putting raw coconut oil on him, but I don’t know if it’s making much difference.

Any help would be great

Seren suffered from really dry skin and some eczema when she was a baby. I found the only way to keep it at bay was to moisturise her ALL the time. Every time I changed her nappy I covered her whole body in weleda baby calandula lotion, and then I’d also do it once in between nappy changes. After 3 days of this intensive moisturising she was much better as long as I keep it up twice a day, and she did grow out of it. I know she had a slight intolerance to dairy on her skin - she came out in a rash on her chin when she spilt porrige or milk on it, but I think her dry skin was not linked to diet.

With the cradle cap, all of mine have had it quite bad (I think it can itch quite a bit too) and I never figured out how to clear it, until I used neem shampoo on nerys (as the older ones had a bout of headlice - eeeuuwww!) and it was miles better after one wash and gentle comb!

hth xx

breastmilk…works wonders! x

dairy is number 1 culprit. cut it out of baby’s diet first. I found my boys weren’t affected by me eating it, only when they starting eating more daiy themselves

I’d remove grains from his diet, to see if that is what causes it. It has a way of causing inflammation in the body (gluten, lectins and phytates). You’d be better off too, probably, as the only ones who can actually digest grains properly are those with more than one stomach (as in cows).

Exzema is almost always the body trying to get rid of toxins through the skin, so trying to remove it by putting on cremes and lotions rarely works - unless those cremes and lotions contain what the body needs to get in balance from the inside out. Coconut oil is great, because it’s a natural anti-inflammatory, but you may also want to give him some to eat to fix it from the inside out. It will be like giving him a pill to calm the inflammation, only completely toxic free and natural.

But again: you need to get to the cause and remove what he’s having a reaction to. That may take some experimenting, and you don’t say what he’s eating, but generally: get him off the porridges from processed grains, skip the bread too, and give him fruits, vegetables, dinner and a lot of water. You can put coconut oil in his food if it’s hard to get him to eat it from a spoon.

If you cover his hair with some kind of oil *I used olive but coconut would be good I guess), leave it for a while to snk in then comb through with as fine a comb as you are happy to use.  I do this every so often then wash their hair well to get rid of the oil, works really well.  DD has bad exczema, have tried cutting stuff out but it has made no difference.  I would say if he really starts to scratch and it goes red it might be best to go to Drs as I left and left DDs just trying natural stuff and nothing helped and she ended up with it getting infected and I felt really awful that she had suffered with it so long when a couple of days with the Drs cream had her much happier and back to much better skin

Hi, All of my children have had severe eczema and my husband has even had to spend a week in hospital for his so I understand!! I notice you are using coconut oil I love this but its not rich enough for eczema if you do use use it as a moistursier then put it on before his bath this works well.
Food can make a huge difference, as he is just 10 months I imagine you have been introducing a lot of new foods over the last few months, I would go backwards and then see if cutting any new foods out makes a difference. The main culprits are milk, eggs (80% of people with eczema are allergic to eggs), wheat, soya and watch for citrus fruits these can be too acidic for little ones.
I would say one of the biggest things you can do is wash all the bedding at 60 degrees, it may not seem very green but you need to kill off dust mites and other bugs that will definately irritate already irritated skin. Wash with either eco balls or simply pure this is the only washing detergent I would reccommend for sensitive skin. I have just started selling my own range of 100% natural eczema products and also have made a leaflet with lots more tips which I could email you if you would like.
I hope this has helped a little , good luck!

Thanks for all of the replies everyone

I have decided that we are going to work on eliminating foods to start with, including myself, as wheat really does not agree with me at all, so I’m going to try working on that. Finlay does not have a great deal of grains anyway, so I’m looking forward to seeing if taking it out of my diet has any effect.

I also have been using calendula cream on the dry spots, and this has really made a big difference. I’m going to continue with the coconut oil also, and see if we continue to see an improvement.

Thanks again; no doubt I will be back with more questions

Very quickly, Akamuti products are great too. If you have a mo, check out their Feedback (left hand side of homepage, halfway down list) as several people have raved about African black soap for cradle cap, and other products (my memory fails me!) for eczema.

Coconut oil is actually quite drying when used on it’s own.  You would be better off using a 100% natural balm.  Akamuti, like the pp suggested, are fab.  My daughter has eczema & I use a homemade balm & we have great success with it.  Running the bath water through a bag/soak of oats helps alot too.  Less frequent bathing also helps.

For my dd, pasturised dairy is a big trigger so we are now a raw dairy household (alot of dairy intolerance is actually pasturisation intolerance), sand, grass & commercial washing powders that we know of.  Grains don’t seem to affect her but we pre-soak all our grains to aid digestion (even cows can’t digest grains & they are actually very bad for cows).  Thing about childhood eczema is that there are generally a lot of triggers so it might be hard to figure out what he is reacting too.

Thanks guys! I have an Akamuti order coming next week-will let you know how we get on!