Towards better sleep zzzzz

The following was written back in Nov 2008. Got too much going on until now, when I found this missing post.
It has never been an easy task to get scratcher to sleep and stay asleep. "Fought" with him many times just to get him to sleep. At one time, it was the most stressful event of the day. He is < 24 months now yet he had only slept through the night a couple days ever since we brought him home from hospital. Thought that I was just being unlucky to brought back a lousy sleeper. Didn't know the underlying reason. When i was breastfeeding him, we thought he woke up in the middle of the night for feeding. Until I weaned him recently only I realized that it was eczema that kept him up during the night.
Being the primary care-taker, I am as sleep deprived as scratcher. On certain days, the night waking was worse than taking care of a newborn baby. After a long night, the result was a fussy and clingy toddler plus a cranky mommy. Whenever that happened, everything became a challenge, be it meal time, nap time, bath time etc. There were just too many episodes of me running out of the house due to stress of handling a crying toddler whom couldn't be soothed.
I kept telling myself it is time to change. All these unnecessary stress have had an unhealthy effect on both of us. He had seen me in tears so many times that he will say "mommy is happy, mommy is not crying". I felt a lot of guilt when I hear that each time. I tried to be strong but it was harder than anyone thought.
There are few things that we did to our bedroom to make scratcher more comfortable at night. We had a air purifier & recently added an osim humidifier in our air-conditioned room. Didn't notice significant improvement when the air purifier was introduced but with the humifier, Bryan seemed to scratch less during the night. The other thing is that I am sleeping with him now. Although we both are practically sharing a single mattress on the floor, I think I have better sleep than waking up, getting to him & climbing back to bed couple times a night. Also I gave him a lot of comfort to get him to sleep, like rubbing his back, scratching his leg and let him hold my hand or touch my back etc anything we can do to prevent a cranky clingy sleep deprived toddler.

Dermatologist's Visit

Finally brought scratcher to the dermatologist. Much to my disappointment, she did not provide any breakthrough on how to treat scratcher's eczema. Still moisturize all time, use steriod cream/ protopic and antihistamine when neccesary.
I have been researching the web quite a bit these days. Lots of stuff to discover in this world of cyber space. What caught my attention was how eczema sufferer's diet could improve their skin condition and thus reduce the number of flare-out. I tried to testify what I read with the dermatologist. Flax seed, spirulina, fish oil, probiotics, evening primrose oil and carrot juice were what I have gathered. Unfortunately, there aren't any conclusive evident that any of these help except for evening primrose oil but its effectiveness is not really convincing too. One thing to note about probiotics. I was asked to consume them to reduce the risk of eczema for my next pregnancy.
Even though, there isn't any research data to support the effectiveness on these supplement, I plan to go ahead and slowly introduce them to scratcher. At least there is something we can do to improve scratcher's eczema. Will have to start micro-managing his diet. It is going to take some time, hopefully we are on the right track.....

An itch that never go away

Scratcher's eczema has been haunting us for the past month or so. Coincidently it is about the same time which I weaned him from breastfeeding. He was 25 months then and I decided it is time. He took it alright, just being more clingy than usual at times. I am not sure if his deterioting skin has anything to do with the breastmilk. But it is natural for me to blame myself for all that happened. I used to have a restricted diet while on breastfeeding. But whenever scratcher had a flare-out, I was the culprit to blame, not by anyone but myself.
I have no idea what is the trigger this time. It may be due to the bad air quality, stress or food he ate.
We had seen our pediatrician twice. During the first visit, scratcher skin's condition was not as bad, but he was waking up a lot during the night. The doctor prescribed antihistamine at night & protopic for application. We gave scratcher the antihistamine for a week but he woke up as much so we decided to stop. I didn't use protopic on scratcher due to the potential cancer risk. The skin around scratcher's neck got really bad last week. It looked inflamed and we brought him to see the pediatrician again. This time we were given Elomet, a steriod cream. Scratcher's old skin started to shed revealing new smooth skin after one application. I believe Elomet is quite a powerful steriod so I stopped using on scratcher after 2 applications.
The clear beautiful smooth skin lasted for a day or two only. After one week, scratcher neck & other problematic area returned to their old self and were as itchy as ever. I am clueless on how to help scratcher to relief his itchy skin. I have decided that it is time we see a dermatologist.

About this Blog

"Scratch mommy scratch" is what my son, the scratcher pleads every night. I have to scratch him to sleep as well as middle of the night waking.
Scratcher was only 2 month old when he was diagnosed with eczema. We didn't know what it was then but were really upset to see our cute baby's face covering with red scally rashes.
This blog will mainly evolves around my struggle to manage scratcher's eczema & hopefully heal him one day. It is dedicated to all moms caring for eczema children.