Infant skin conditions (continued)

Ever since Emma was diagnosed with having impetigo we've been giving her daily antibiotics, washing her face gently, and keeping her hands covered to prevent her from scratching her skin and making it worse.  I've found that if her sleepers don't have hand covers, her socks do a really good job of being little mittens to keep her hands covered.  Just the other day I was out shopping and the family behind me in the check out line was commenting on her.  Of course they noticed her cheeks, and then their little girl asked why Emma was wearing socks on her hands.  I guess it may look a little silly, but it does the trick!  I usually at least tried to choose color coordinating socks. :)

Check out my sock mittens! (This photo was taken today and you can see her face is much better now!)

She had just been sucking on her sock in this one

Anyway, Emma's skin started to look like it was getting better within the first few days on antibiotics.  The yellow crusty bits were flaking off and going away.  However, the redness was still pretty bad and the skin itself still looked pretty raw, especially around her mouth.  I waited it out for the full 3 days that they said it would take for things to start clearing up.  Then this past Friday I felt that it wasn't *that* much better, so by Saturday morning I decided to take her back in to have it looked at.

I drove her to the nearest Children's Hospital (since it was the weekend and our doctor's office was closed) and we got there just at the right time (it was empty when we got there, but the waiting room was pretty full when we left!).  She weighed in this time at 12 lbs 5 oz (or 5.6 kg) without clothes and wearing a clean diaper (as opposed to her previous doctor visit where she still had her sleeper and a possibly wet diaper on).  Then after getting her basic vitals and stats, the doctor saw Emma pretty quickly.  He said it looked like the infection was healing well, but that she had eczema now.  I told him how I thought it was eczema when I took her in earlier (at the time they told me it was impetigo).  He said it's likely it was eczema that then developed the impetigo infection.  So now that we're treating the impetigo, we need to treat the eczema.

He prescribed a steroid ointment and said that until we get the prescription filled (our pharmacy is closed on weekends) that we can use hydrocortisone ointment on her.  So for the past two days now I've put hydrocortisone on her face where it's red and it's already getting better!  Sure it's still a bit dry and flakey, but the redness and rawness is finally started to subside!

We still have a few more days on the antibiotics, and I'll fill her steroid cream prescription in the morning, but I'm just relieved to know that it may be getting better for her finally.