eczema

After we took Chloe to her follow-up appointment with her pediatrician, we had the epi-pen juniors and orders not to give her any more milk, of course. That was in May of 2008. Along with this discovery we found the cure for Chloe's skin condition.

Chloe had mild eczema on her head, chin, and occasionally inside her elbows and on her back. It wasn't bad enough to be alarming, but bad enough that it marred her pretty face. We have pictures from our Portland trip that show her with it on her chin. Up til then her doctor had just given us some ointment to put on it.

When we found out she had a milk allergy, I started doing some research, and discovered that babies with a milk allergy and who are breast-fed often have eczema if the mother consumes dairy. In fact, about forty percent of eczemas in breast-fed infants are due to an allergic reaction to the mother's dairy intake.

I was kind of dismayed, to say the least, that our pediatrician hadn't suggested that. It would have saved us that trip to the hospital (and a bunch of money). I found other mothers out there whose babies had had eczema so severe that it was literally disfiguring. Once they removed all dairy from their diets, the babies' eczema cleared up to the point that you couldn't tell the poor dear had ever had it.

It was a struggle getting dairy out of my diet. It took about six weeks. The first few weeks I just stopped having breakfast cereal, and cut back on eating cheese and ice cream. Chloe's eczema would come and go. I went to a conference with some colleagues and for dinner one night they bought us pizza, which I ate, and then we went for dinner the next night and I had pasta in a cream sauce.

Chloe's eczema wasn't going away, and I could really tell that after those two meals it got worse. I got serious. I eliminated every single trace of dairy from my diet and after almost a month Chloe's skin condition was completely gone. If any of you have had to do that, or have chosen to cut out dairy, you know that it is very difficult, because dairy is in everything, and the last tidbit to go was that couple of tablespoons of milk in my coffee in the mornings.

To this day I'm still a little annoyed that our pediatrician didn't suggest the connection. In fact, I really am having trouble letting that go. It seems so obvious to me. If fully forty percent of infant eczemas are due to an allergy to the dairy they are getting through their mother's breast milk...isn't it worth it to suggest it, rather than simply prescribe an ointment?

It was absolutely lovely, though, to see Chloe with clear skin.