A mum has revealed how she struggled to hold her baby because his skin had been ravaged so badly by eczema.
Angelo Berry, now 4, was diagnosed with the condition when he was just six weeks old.
Mum Chiara, a mental health nurse, said: ‘It was around his six-week check-up, we noticed his skin was very dry and that’s how it started out.’
She said his skin became ‘red and bloody, dry and flaky’ and doctors at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool warned her he could be scarred for life.
Angelo’s skin was left ‘open and weeping’, and his mum said he was in ‘so much pain’. Shocking pictures show the eczema covering his body.
Chiara, who is also mum to Rosa-Maria, 6, and is expecting another baby in December, said: ‘He had to have bandage therapy for three weeks all over his body.
‘They have special cream they put on the skin and special, strong steroid creams in the bandages themselves.
‘They wrap them like a mummy so it soaked in and it had to be changed every other day.’
But now Chiara and Angelo’s dad Jonathon, who live in Newton-le-Willows, say their child’s eczema can be treated with steroid creams and he is no longer covered in painful rashes from head to toe.
Chiara added: ‘He still gets in behind his knees, his elbows. It tends to just be a flare up but the creams we have at home target it immediately.
‘They told us as he grows older he should get better. And we have noticed in these four years massive improvements already.
‘He’s brilliant, he’s currently off with chicken pox at the moment. He’s just started school last week and we’re really happy with his progress.
All about eczema
Last week was National Eczema Week, when the National Eczema Society worked to raise awareness of the condition.
According to the NHS, eczema is a condition that causes the skin to become itchy, dry and cracked.
It is more common in children, often developing before their first birthday – but it may also develop for the first time in adults.
It is usually a long-term (chronic) condition, although it can improve significantly, or even clear completely, in some children as they get older.
Some people only have small patches of dry skin, but others may experience widespread inflamed skin all over the body.
The condition can be treated with special moisturisers, and steroid creams where it is particularly bad.
‘We’re really made up as a family because at one stage, even just holding him as a baby, he was in so much pain.
‘We did worry about it quite a bit but he’s come on loads.’
They say Angelo doesn’t appear to have been left with scars, and they hope he has grown out of the condition.
‘Even when we talk to people about Angelo’s story, they just can’t believe how bad he was,’ she said.
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