N has eczema. We were not sure we could handle his skin. We’d seen him multiple times before he came to live with us. He was red and swollen. He was very itchy and scratched himself until he bled often. His skin kind of scared us.

The way his skin looks today doesn’t look at all the way he looked when we first got him. He saw his dermatologist on Friday and she was so happy with how great he looks that he doesn’t have to go back for a whole year.

So what do we do?

Well, we discovered his eczema gets worse when he eats gluten. It was pretty much an accident that we figured this out and if so many of us were gluten free already we never would have. I really think taking him off gluten has helped his skin the most.

We also found he scratches more at night if he’s played outside in the pollen and doesn’t get a bath before bed. So now we bathe him every night to get that pollen off him. That really helps with the scratch until he bleeds thing.

After his bath he gets gel rubbed into his still damp skin two or three times a week and gets rubbed with Aveeno eczema therapy cream every night and every morning.

It takes some work, but it’s not nearly as difficult as we had feared (especially since we already are used to making gluten free food).