Where to start with eliminating food? Eczema in 6 mos old.

[LilLilly]

At 4 mos old, I noticed my DS had a few eczema patches. At 5 mos, when he started teething, his eczema flared up all over his arms and his belly. His back often looks just kind of spotty/ rashy. The rashiness on his trunk comes and goes, but his arms never clear up. In general he is a very happy baby, but doesn't sleep well. We bedshare and he wakes frequently at night. The first wake-up is usually just 30 minutes after I get him to sleep. Usually he will be up for at least a 1-2 hour interval in the middle of the night and is up very early in the morning. This definitely got worse with teething. He is just turning 6 mos old and the only food I have introduced is avocado. I am planning to do banana and then sweet potato next. I am feeling like eczema needs to be healed from within and am thinking I need to start eliminating common allergens from my diet. Do I go all out with all the major ones like dairy, gluten, corn, eggs.... etc, or just start with dairy and gluten. I love my raw dairy and all my homemade sprouted grain breads, so this seems very challenging! I'm wondering when I will have the time to plan for new foods and menus. Any advice on how to get started would be helpful.

[bodhitree]

You could try just dairy at first, since it seems to be a common culprit for eczema. You might see complete improvement just by cutting out dairy. And if you don't, then you can try cutting out additional foods as necessary. BTW, something I wish I'd known when we first cut out dairy is that you can make your own yogurt out of coconut milk. I used the instructions from the Angela's Kitchen blog and it comes out great. That might be a good way of replacing some of the dairy for you, and it's way cheaper (with fewer odd ingredients) than the stuff you can buy at Whole Foods or wherever.

[DevaMajka]

Sounds very similar to J when he was 5 mos old. His eczema started after introducing solids too (banana and apple).

It's hard to know what to take out, and how fast. You can start with one and keep taking stuff out to see if things improve, or you can start with taking a lot out, then if things improve add things back in one by one.

Dairy and wheat are common triggers, so it makes sense to take them out, but you could start with the other common triggers and see where that gets you.

My experience isn't the norm, but it ended up that wheat, dairy, and eggs seem ok for us.

I recommend keeping a food journal, and going really slow on introducing solids.

ED's are hard in the beginning, but you get used to it. lol.