The Mule

Followers of this blog will know that, about 8 weeks after my third baby was born (he is now 3), he developed eczema that was so severe, he looked like he had been burnt in a fire. Think I'm exaggerating? This pic was taken on the 31st October, when he was about 6 weeks old: Clear skin. By 18th November, we were in Eczemaville: By 4th December, we were in hell: The next pic is one of those random snaps, probably taken by another child, but for me it encapsulates how I was feeling at the time, the concern I felt for him, the tenderness, and how I could not take my eyes of him, and how I wanted to make it all better. And here's one more so you get the idea of how severe baby eczema can be. (I had no idea until it happened to me). I've actually had to scroll my screen down so that I can carry on writing this post without having to look at these pics. They literally cause me physical pain. Anyway! Let's cheer up because there is a good en...

"How come you have stopped blogging?", someone asked me recently. Short answer: I had a baby. Slightly longer answer: I had my third baby, my life is chaos, I got a job as a columnist and it's all I can do to get that done every week, I'm a perfectionist and it takes me ages to write anything, oh, and my baby got eczema and it's pretty much taken over our life. Eczema? Isn't that just like, a rash? A bit of dry skin, the odd bit of redness behind the knees. That's what I thought, and almost laughed when the community nurse suggested I apply for disability allowance shortly after the eczema started. Four months on, it has nearly broken me. I can't describe to you how awful it is just to see your baby not looking right. This might sound awfully superficial, but I'm sure it's much deeper than that. There must be something hard-wired into the deeper, older parts of a mother's brain, to feel ill-at-ease if her baby looks sick. The skin of...