by Jamie Reed posted in Parenting

Waiting for my baby to arrive I thought often about the physical traits my husband and I would pass onto him. Would he get my nose" My husband?s eyes" My childhood white blonde hair, or my husband?s dark brown hair" One thing I never thought about" My husband?s eczema.
When Indy was just a few weeks old I noticed how rough and dry his skin felt on occasion. Quite often he would wake up with red, chapped cheeks, as though he?d been outside for hours on a windy day. I don?t know how many times I took his temperature, afraid his flushed cheeks were indicative of a fever. No fever, just red and chapped.
As weeks passed, the rougher the skin seemed to be. The cradle cap that never seemed to go away completely was still there, only now it was scalier, and his little scalp was always so red. In fact, all of him seemed to be red. His skin always felt warm and dry and the never-ending application of lotions only seemed to make tiny temporary improvements. For so long I just thought we were dealing with fickle newborn skin. Not being an eczema sufferer myself, my husband was the one to point out when Indy?s skin started to seep and ooze. (At first I thought he was just waking up sweaty.) Some mornings his little arms and legs felt damp, and some mornings they were soaked. I didn?t realize it at the time, but his little body was swollen in places ? in his legs, his arms, and even his neck.
We were officially dealing with eczema.
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