It turns out, Elijah has eczema. I had no idea. It's especially strange since neither Daniel nor I had eczema as a child. We also don't have any real allergies (which often co-occur with eczema). So hopefully that means Elijah will grow out of it.
We received the diagnosis on Sunday morning at an urgent care visit. A few weeks ago we discovered these little red pinpoint spots all over Elijah's chest, stomach, and arms. We figured that he must be allergic to something, so we stopped putting lotion on him. Bad idea. There's this little patch on his forehead that has always been dry and scaly. As long as I put lotion on it regularly (about once a day was enough) then it was hardly noticeable. So when we stopped putting lotion on him, this patch got worse and worse. In the next 48 hours, it spread across his forehead and down the side of his face onto his cheek on one side. And the pinpoint red spots on his body didn't go away. On Sunday morning we undressed him to give him a bath and I kind of freaked out. I decided we needed to go to urgent care. His chest, stomach, and arms had pinpoint red spots. His elbows and the creases in his elbows on both sides were red and he screamed when we touched them. His back was covered in red welt-looking spots, his scalp was covered in cradle cap (scaly patches of skin). He was just a mess.
But it got worse. During his morning bottle, Daniel asked me if he was sweating. He noticed some perspiration-like liquid on his forehead. I got a tissue and wiped it away, and it was yellowish. Like pus or something. This liquid continued to ooze from his forehead and then dry on in a thick yellow-orange crust. Elijah was constantly rubbing at his forehead with his hands and rubbing his head on us while we held him. So we went to the doctor. They got us right in and it only cost us the usual co-pay of $30. I am so grateful, once again, for our health insurance. The doctor looked him over and told us that it was infant eczema. I kind of already knew this from the online research that I did. She told us how to treat it and gave us a prescription cortisone cream to put on twice a day. She explained also that the eczema was causing his whole body to be extra-sensitive and that's where all the other skin irritation came from. She said that once we get his forehead under control, the rest of his body will calm down too.
Sunday was pretty awful. Elijah couldn't sleep. When we tried to rock him, he closed his eyes but squirmed constantly, trying to scratch. He barely napped that day and was up every 90 minutes from 7pm until 1am. From 1am-3am he just cried while we tried everything we could think of to get him to sleep. Finally I put him (swaddled) in the car seat and put that in the stroller and drove him around our living room in circles. It quieted him down immediately and I picked him up and rocked him to sleep. I have no idea why that worked, but I was so relieved when it did. He slept all the way until 6:30am.
Then I drove him to day care to drop him off so I could go back home and sleep. I called in sick to work. I knew I wouldn't be doing quality work anyways on the amount of sleep I got, and with the holidays everyone was gone anyways. I left lotion with his teachers and instructed them to put it on him every time they change his diaper. I had to sign a form to allow them to do this. But a couple hours later they called me and told me they needed a doctor's signature since this lotion was treating a condition instead of preventing one. Daniel called his doctor's office, but they never faxed the form back. In the meantime I was hysterical. I imagined Elijah just miserable with itchy skin and nobody putting lotion on him. I called a few times to check in and just cried and cried when they told me he wasn't napping well and was fussy. Finally in the early afternoon one of his teachers called and told me he took a long nap and was doing better. She also told me that she was putting lotion on him anyways because she couldn't sit there while he was so miserable and do nothing. She also has had a child with eczema in her class before and knew how important moisturizing is to heal it. We could have lost days of healing if she hadn't ignored their rule. I am so grateful that she did because by the time Elijah came home that day, the redness had almost disappeared.
24 (miserable) hours after the urgent care visit, and it started to improve. 48 hours later and the redness disappeared. One more day, and it just looks like he has a little flaky dry skin on his face and the rest of his body is completely normal. Thank goodness! I think that now the key is prevention. We need to lube him up with lotion at least once a day and bathe him less often (soap is drying and can exacerbate eczema).
I am starting to learn that with each challenge we get through, I gain great confidence in myself as a mother. It's rough, but the feeling at the end that we solved yet another problem, and got through yet another difficult couple of days, is so rewarding.
No comments:
Post a Comment