Update

Our son is doing so much better now. He has an allergist. He has a pediatrician. He hasn't needed to go to a dermatologist now.

He does probably have asthma, which I worried about, but I don't know that I could have done anything more or done anything differently.

He takes Qvar and Singular daily. He takes ProAir HVA when he needs it. In the winter and spring, he was getting a lot of ear infections, but then he got ear tubes and that helped.

He still has a prescription for Desonide, and we use that during flareups, mainly in the diaper area. We have to use Pampers Sensitive Diapers. Also, we still cannot use Johnson and Johnson on him. Cerave is a good moisturizer. Except that he sometimes likes to make a mess with it. We can now use baby shampoo, but only for his hair.

For now, things are looking good, better.

Saturday Stress or sometimes a boy just needs his mama

And sometimes his mama just needs a break, a rest, a nap. Times when his mama just needs to get away from said boy and take some time for herself.

Ben was scratching his chest tonight. I don't think it was allergy related. But it may have been stress. I was gone most of the day, and he seemed to miss me. His sleep schedule seemed to be disrupted because he took a nap later than usual, and he woke up cranky and hungry.

I gave him a bath, as usual, only not usual because the last few nights I had been bathing him purified water. Our water went out Wednesday morning, and there was a boil water advisory for 48 hours, and I didn't want to use possibly contaminated water to bathe him. So I used slightly colder purified water. He didn't like that at all.

Tonight, it was back to regular water, but he still didn't want to be in the bath. He kept trying to get out. I told him no when he grabbed my glasses, and he got upset and started scratching his bare chest. I don't think it was allergies, just stress. On night like this, I'd like to scratch something too.

My Poor, Red Baby

Ben is finally sleeping now, but I'm not sure if I can because he's been scratching himself in his sleep, and I don't want him to wake up and scratch himself for a long time while I'm sleeping.

Like everything else, the Aquaphor helped for a few days, and then it hurt. He probably does have a Lanolin allergy. So we tried just olive oil. This didn't seem to be enough for the most irritated place on his body--his neck. We tried corn starch. The corn starch just dried him out too much.

So we tried Lubriderm for sensitive skin. He cried when I put this one. I gave him and bath and tried Johnson's Head to Toe Fragrance Free Baby Lotion. He got a rash all over him.

Then, we put on Cerave. It didn't seem to cause immediate irritation, but he's been scratching most of the night. For Ben, moisturizes for 24-hours equals irritates for 24 hours. What do I try next? I wish that I didn't have to wait so long for the appointment with the other dermatologist.

I wonder if the Claritin is helping even less than the Zyrtec did. It makes me mad because Ben is the cutest, happiest baby. He wakes up and smiles, at me, at Jamie, at the dogs. He's friendly and sweet, and he doesn't deserve to be itchy and red and sore all the time. There's all this technology everywhere, and yet it's so hard to find something that will help keep a little boy from scratching himself until he bleeds. I just don't understand why science doesn't know more about how to manage this condition by now.

On the Bright Side

On the negative side, Ben has been to three different doctors in the last few months--his regular doctor, an allergist and a dermatologist. He is allergic to more things that I imaged he could be--wheat, eggs--both yolks and whites--, cashews and peanuts and possibly other nuts as well since he hasn't been tested for all of them. His skin is super-sensitive, and we have had a hard time find a good lubricant, soap and shampoo. We switched his Diaper's recently to Earth's Best because the Pamper's Cruisers were irritating him or seeming to. Sometimes, figuring out what is bothering him is like playing Clue but without a card that explains the answers.

But on the bright side, Ben is a happy, healthy baby. He is meeting his milestones. He rolls over both ways and sits up for short periods of time. He is drooling and may be teething. We're going on day 2 and 1/2 of Aquaphor and, so far, no itching.

We have a plan in case Aquaphor fails--Vaseline or zinc oxide or Lubriderm for sensitive skin. We tried Lubriderm Advanced Therapy, and it irritated him. But, eventually, hopefully, his skin will become less sensitive, or, at least he'll be able to tell us what hurts and what does not.

For now, in spite of the daily craziness of caring for a small, mostly helpless being, things are going well.

All Natural is Not Allergy Free

The other day we started putting Burt's Bees Thoroughly Therapeutic on Ben. I started doing this because we were absolutely desperate to find something that worked. We had been using cocoa butter and olive oil. Olive oil seemed to help, especially on his head, but we had to apply the cocoa butter all the time, and it still wasn't stopping the dryness.

The ingredients in Burt's Bees Thoroughly Therapeutic are: water, sunflower oil, vegetable glyerin, coconut oil, stearic acid (vegetable fat), beeswax, glucose (sugar), aloe barbadensis leaf extract, honey, orange wax, rosemary leaf extract, milk powder tocopherol (vitamin E), xanthan gum (natural thickener) sucrose stearate (sugar emulsifier), sodium borate (natural borax), fragrance, glucose oxidase and lactoperoxidase (natural preservative).

Anyway, last night, Ben started scratching, so I gave him his Zyrtec and put on Burt's Bees, but the Burt's Bees wasn't helping. It was making it worse. So we gave him a bath--before the bath we tried Borage cream, and that didn't help either-- and washed his hair in Dr. Bonner's Magic Soap Baby Mild. This contains water, organic olive oil, organic coconut oil, organic jojoba oil, citric acid and vitamin C. So far, this does not seem to be irritating his skin.

We tried Cerave. This did not help either, and we had to give him another bath. By not helping, I mean making the itching worse. At this point, I did not know what to try. But we had to try something, find something to soothe his skin and keep it from getting more dry.

I decided to try Aquaphor. We had tried it before, and it hadn't seem to help. Eucerin, which is made by the same company, made his skin turn red, so I thought maybe he had a lanolin allergy, but we recently discovered that these travel wipes that he has been using also contain Lanolin, and they haven't bothered him, so maybe no Lanolin allergy.

Anyway, the Aquaphor seemed to soothe him. But we won't know for a few days if really helps or not. Sometimes, it takes that long for an allergy to show up. In the meantime, I called his allergist, and we're going to try and figure out if the Zyrtec is helping by taking him off it and then giving it to him when he's itching to see if does anything. If that does not work, we will try children's Claritin. Also, she recommended trying zinc oxide on his skin. We're going to wait and see about the Aquaphor first.

But the goods news is that my shipment of Lucy's cookies came, in four varieties.

Gluten-Free: What can you eat?

When Ben's allergist said that he was allergic to wheat, at first I didn't really understand. For some reason, I thought, okay, no wheat bread, no problem.

In that moment, I didn't think flour. I didn't think cake. I didn't think pizza. I didn't realize how prevalent wheat is. Ben does not have Celiac disease. What he has is a wheat allergy, an allergy that we hope he outgrows. But, since I'm still feeding him, Ben's allergies to eggs, wheat, peanuts and some tree nuts, have meant radical changes to our diet.

At first, I didn't think I'd be able to eat anything, but the doctor reminded me: He's not allergic to corn or oats or soy or beef or chicken. But being Italian, my diet consisted of a lot of wheat. Pizza, pasta, cake. Wheat was like a staple of my daily life.

But because of Ben's wheat allergies, I've learned that there are a lot of things that I can eat that aren't made with wheat. One thing that is used as a substitute for wheat is rice. There's rice pasta and rice flour. I just found an egg substitute today that is wheat free. The regular grocery store did not seem to have an egg-free egg substitute.

For lunch today, I had Amy's Mexican Tamale Pie.



It's made with organic vegetables and beans. It is gluten free and contains no dairy. I also found some pretty good gluten-free pretzels by Glutino. The one thing that I haven't been quite able to get used to, however, is rice bread.

Allergy Baby

One of the things I worry about is. . .what if Ben doesn't outgrow his allergies?

What if he develops asthma? (I have asthma, so this is not an unreasonable fear).

What if he's that dorky kid with the inhaler and the special food that no one wants to invite over to their houses or to their birthday parties?

What if he has to sit in the corner eating rice cakes while every other kid enjoys Reese's Peanut Butter Cups?

Shopping for his allergies has been challenging. But, luckily, we discovered a store that sells gluten-free products and is close to where we live: http://www.nilajo.com/retailer/store_templates/shell_id_1.asp?storeID=22B87C8A252142BE8EDF2EC0B8D16B07.

The thing is though that we can't really go "all natural." We tried all natural remedies and his skin still flared up. That's because, and I didn't realize this, people can have allergies to all-natural things like coconut oil, aloe or, even, calendula.

Calendula is the favored ingredient in many natural creams, but when you put it on and the wound oozes pus, well. . .

One natural food brand that I'm really liking is Amy's Organics. Have you tried Amy's Organics, or can you recommend any other brands that are friendly to people with allergies?

What Causes Allergies?

According to the Allergy and Asthma Foundation of America, about 20 percent of Americans have allergies, and 8 percent of children under 6 have allergies.

The foundation states that, "Like baldness, height and eye color, the capacity to become allergic is an inherited characteristic" (2005).

But just because you have a genetic predisposition to develop allergies to a substance, this does not mean that you automatically will.

The foundation states that exposure to the allergen also plays a role in whether or not you develop an allergy.

Because I have allergies, I feel bad that my son also has them. It makes me wonder, what went wrong with my genes? Will Ben battle allergies all his life, or will he outgrow them? Is there anything that I could have done to prevent this?

Some evidence suggests that breastfeeding can help prevent allergies, and Ben was mostly breastfed, but not exclusively. If I had not given him an formula at all, could I have prevented this?

Do you have allergies? Did your parents have allergies? What do you do to manage them?

Vaseline Bath

One thing that seems to be helping Ben's skin is Vaseline baths. When I first read about the idea on the Internet, it seemed crazy, but my husband wanted to try it.

The other day, however, Ben's skin was so red and inflamed that anything seemed worth a shot. So, we did it.

It didn't cure Ben's eczema, but it really helped to restore some of the hydration to Ben's skin. We bathed him again in Vaseline last night.

Actually, what we've been doing is a bath in Aveeno Baby Bath. The Aveeno lotions don't seem to help, but the oat baths do seem to soothe.

Ben's allergist recommended using all fragrance free products on him. This has made shopping for shampoo, for example, to be challenging. We've decided to try this shampoo, which I ordered from the Internet the other day: http://www.exederm.com/baby-eczema-shampoo.html.

Ben has such extremely sensitive skin that he is irritated by both herbal remedies (not sure which herbs are the culprit, however) and harsh chemicals. A lot of over-the-counter lotions and creams contain potentially irritating chemicals or nut oils. Apparently, hypoallergenic just means that the general public would not be sensitive to a product, but Ben is not the general public.

I am learning so much about allergies and eczema. Before, I only had a vague idea of what eczema even was, and now, I am reading and learning and hoping to relieve Ben's super-irritated skin.

We just upped the dose of children's Zyrtec, which was prescribed for Ben in March. So, hopefully, this will help.

If you are also an eczema and allergy sufferer, what worked for you?

Skin Problems

Our son, Ben, who is 6 months-old, is a perfect miracle. However, his skin problems have been less than perfect and less than amazing.

He started developing problems with redness and cradle cap in the first few months of his life. At first, we didn't know what it was.

Upon seeing his red, irritated skin, our doctor pronounced, "It's perfectly normal." He said he thought it would go away on its own.

The doctor recommended using Johnson's Baby Lotion three or four times a day. That didn't work, and, in fact, it seemed to only be irritating his skin. We tried everything that was recommended to us.

Aveeno Baby Lotion didn't seem to irritate his skin, but it didn't seem to help either.

California Baby Calendula Cream seemed to help at first, and then it didn't. We also tried the super-sensitive lotion, and that didn't help, and it also smelled somewhat unpleasant. The Calendula Lotion from California Baby made his skin very itchy.

Eucerin and Aquaphor made his skin red and swollen.

In March, we took Ben to an allergist. She said that helping relieve his skin problems will be trial and error. She gave us samples of Cerave to try and suggested putting one lotion on one leg, and one on the other.

I try to just use one lotion at a time, but when his eczema causes skin inflammations, sometimes it is tempting to just keep putting on lotion after lotion. This does not work, and is not a good idea.

I'm learning that a lot of things in lotions, even supposedly hypoallergenic lotions, can be irritating to people with skin sensitivities.

Ben's allergist recommended that we rip labels off of products that irritate him and put them in a notebook. This can begin to isolate the cause of the irritation. This is a plodding method. I wish there was a cure right now because I don't want my baby to suffer. He is healthy and good tempered, and we love him so much.

A final note in this first post: We had read that eczema can be related to food allergies. We had a blood test done to test for food allergies. Ben is allergic to eggs, wheat, peanuts and some tree nuts. I am feeding him, so this means that I have had to alter my diet. This has been a challenge, but hopefully it will lead to healthier diets for all of us.