Bishop's Battle

I've been looking through pictures of Bishop trying to get together some of my favorites during his first year for an album (he'll be 1 in 12 days!).  I came across this picture and it made my stomach sink. Bishop's battle with eczema started at 6 weeks when I noticed a rash on his face.  Slowly that rash made its way down to the rest of his body and became so  bad that it would begin to weep and bleed.  I couldn't bathe him or put lotion on his skin.  He would scream and start shaking if he even saw the bottle. He was also suffering from gastrointestanial issues, edema and food allergies that he was getting through my milk.  His skin was screaming out to me that his body was under stress.

I was desperate to help him so I spent hours researching online, taking him to numerous visits with our wonderful Pediatrician, natural health doctors and Chiropractors.  It has been a long hard year for us but I am happy to say that we have found a good combination of treatments and he has greatly improved. 

Here are some things that have helped... 

First I did an elimination diet to figure out the offending foods.  I basically ate chicken and rice for several months and slowly added in different foods. It was horrible and I was starved but through it we learned that he is gluten intolerant with suspected allergies to soy, tomatoes, bananas and dairy, although he has recently been fine eating YoBaby yogurt.   

His bath water is filtered. If you don't want to get a filtration system installed Whole Foods has bath balls that you put under running water to remove chlorine. Unfortunately since his skin can not tolerate chlorine that meant no pool for us this summer. 

I couldn't  use any of the "all natural" lines on him like California Baby or Burt's Bees so I started making  my own skin care products using organic herbs, oils and beeswax with no perservatives. I learned from my Herbalist course that I enrolled in after all my researching of natural alternatives.  I was so happy with the results that I'm now selling them. You can look into them here.

He sees a Chiropractor regularly for adjustments. Dr.Farris at BeWell Chiropratic is so great! She found that  his hips were extremely rotated and his spine was out of line (possibly from delivery). This was causing him to be constipated and gassy.  Once he started going to the bathroom on a daily basis his skin began to show signs of improvement. 

Another possible cause of his eczema and edema was that he had a toxin overload in his system.  His liver was having trouble processing toxins. This according to his natural health doctor could have occured in utero...which made me feel horrible!  I wish my desire to live naturally had happened sooner. Now I know how important it really is!  You can go here to read a study done on umbilical cord blood exposing 287 chemicals. Of those chemicals found 180 cause cancer in humans or animals, 217 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 208 cause birth defects or abnormal development! 

We have a long list of natural remedies we give him daily to keep him on the right track.  To name a few...probiotics, zinc, iodine, kelp root, noni juice and mercury free fish oil (evening primrose oil is also great to take orally for eczema) and  I promise that really is just a few.

We never went the traditional route of getting a prescription cream for him because I knew that there was more going on internally and I wanted to treat him naturally.  If I just masked the condition we never would have been able to treat it properly.  I would be even more relucantent now after new studies have emerged of a possible link between cancer and certain medicated creams for eczema. 

If your on the same road as us I encourage you to keep researching and trying new things. Relief won't happen over night but if you spend the extra time and money to find out why it's happening then I promise the long term result will be worth it.