When our daughter was born I tried to listen to the advice people gave me. This was our pre-vegetarian days. Initially I switched to purchasing high quality meats and organic dairy. The realization that everything I ate was being broken down into breast milk for her made me uncomfortable with eating many of the things we used to enjoy. I had been warned to go very light on the dairy as babies have a hard time digesting milk proteins. For a period of time I drank extremely little milk and only had yogurt which I had heard was more digestible.
Things were relatively event less until Sarah turned about two and a half months old. During a middle of the night diaper change I felt tiny bumps on Sarah's legs. I switched on a small light. They weren't red and looked a lot like the infant acne she used to have on her face. The next few nights it seemed that Sarah was having a terrible time sleeping. She kept kicking her legs; at first we thought she was "discovering" her feet, until the realization that she was rubbing her legs kicked in. One morning I realized that she had rubbed the bumps raw and they were weeping. Scared I called our pediatrician. I drove her to the doctor late on a Friday afternoon. The first thing the nurse practitioner asked was if I had started eating any new foods. I couldn't think of any at the time and she reassured me this was eczema.
Being a new parent and wanting to "fix" my daughter I did everything they suggested. I slathered her legs with steroid foam. I switched from my organic Lafe's baby wash to Aveeno, I went from an unscented detergent to Dreft and I even used disposable diapers for a very short period of time.
A lightbulb went off during a 3 a.m. feeding that I had recently begun eating cantaloupe. I googled "cantaloupe allergy." I gathered that while it was usually an oral "itchy" allergy it was related to the ragweed allergy. Being that I am HIGHLY allergic to ragweed. Bingo I thought, I'll stop eating melon.
The rash eventually faded but spiked glamorously again a week or two later. This time the rash also covered the backs of her elbows and arms. Rushing her back to the doctor the nurse practitioner gave me more steroids and said that maybe my car seat was causing her rash. This time my husband was with me and we both felt brushed off. We were instructed to give her Benedryl to make her sleep and more steroid cream as needed for redness.
Holding Sarah at night while she slept was the only way to keep her from kicking (itching) her legs. We were on a tight regiment of steroid cream, lotion, and petroleum jelly. Once applied we carefully slid my ankle socks over her legs to keep the greasy mess from getting everywhere. I was convinced there was an environmental trigger, but what? She had recently begun napping in her crib as she outgrew her bassinet; was it the mattress? $300+ dollars and an organic naturepedic mattress later I confirmed that no it was not the mattress. Was it diet? Cantaloupe was out but she was still having strange sudden break-outs. I felt so helpless and as Sarah struggled to rest comfortable I became increasingly uncomfortable with the "treat the rash" approach.
Google turned into my obsession. I checked for the most common eczema triggers; many were foods. Deciding to spend more money that we didn't have I made Sarah an appointment with an allergy specialist. He had eczema and childhood allergies listed as specialties and taught at the local university near where we lived (at the time in Florida). I have never been more frustrated with a doctor. The photos shown here are her skin the morning of our appointment.
He explained to me that Sarah's case of eczema was VERY mild a 1 or 2 on a scale of 1-10. While thankful she wasn't any higher in his opinion, I was still concerned. I asked about doing an elimination diet as I had read about online. The idea is to remove all highly allergenic foods from the diet and slowly re-introduce them to see which would cause reaction. He told me only 30% of eczema cases were related to food and that it would be near impossible to figure it out. (Only 30%??? That's 1 in 3!) He also explained to me that eczema was the "itch that rashes" so the bumps were only going to show up where she was making contact with things.
In a nut-shell, his conclusion was that eczema was something she would be dealing with for at least 2 years and I should just give her Zyrtec and use topical hydrocortisone when she had a flair up. He told me that he didn't want me to be frustrated with her or become frustrated with being a mother. He told me that he didn't want me to be so stressed out that I wouldn't want future babies. I wasn't thinking about future babies though, I was thinking about this baby!
Frustrated to the point of tears I left the practice vowing to get to the bottom of her eczema. I had read testimonials of people online who had figured out their child's dietary triggers. I had the personal story of a friend that struggled with eczema her entire life (through her mid-20's) until she was food-allergy tested. While Sarah was too young to be tested for allergies I was ready to attempt the elimination diet on my own.
I choose to eat very low allergy foods for a period of time and slowly re-introduce the higher-allergy foods. I carefully made sure that I was still meeting my nutritional needs while I ate my very bland diet. It was working, her skin was clearing up. This diet of low-allergy foods was also almost vegan. When I re-introduced eggs after a month without them she broke out. When I ate soup with squash in it she broke out. After more frantic googling I found that like cantaloupe, squash, cucumber, and bananas were in the same family of foods linked with the ragweed allergy. My careful intake of foods was having a profound impact on the condition of her skin. While I was still diligent to moisturize Sarah's skin, the petroleum jelly and steroid creams were no longer needed. It took us about 6 weeks for us to figure it out. We were lucky.
The end results were that eczema (In SARAH's Case) was triggered by:
Squash and Melon family items
Eggs
Dairy
Chlorine (no baby swim for us).
Certain exposed elastic (our x-mas dress :(
Long car rides in high heat (If it's hot enough that she gets sweaty in the carseat her back breaks out)
Since mid-fall of 2009 we have needed no more steroids, benedryl, lotions or creams. Sarah has beautiful clear skin. It does break out if I have even a couple of tablespoons of food that has squash in it. I have not attempted to re-introduce anything else. I am planning on having her tested for food allergies when she turns 2.
This was the beginning of our full-vegetarian journey. More to follow :-)
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