Little Lola Weston was born with perfect skin, but just a month after she was born, mum Danielle Wright-Humphreys noticed a rash crop up on the baby’s cheek.
That small pink rash soon spread to the rest of Lola’s body within two months, leaving the concerned mum-of-two at a total loss for what to do.
She was prescribed numerous creams for what was diagnosed as eczema, but they just made the rashes swollen and red.
And when Danielle, 24, would stop applying the creams, the baby’s skin would dry out, crack and bleed.
Danielle, who lives in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, with Lola, her son Joey Weston, two, and her gas engineer fiancé Joe Weston, 25, said: ‘She was a month old when I noticed this little patch of dry skin on her cheek.
‘It would flare up every now and then, but I didn’t think too much of it at first. I assumed it was just some irritation from her slobbering in the night.
‘But then, at three months old, I woke up one day and she was trying to scratch herself. She had really dry skin and a rash all over her body.’
Danielle, whose son has clear skin, was mystified by Lola’s sudden rashes, which covered her belly and arms.
Worried, she sent an image to her doctor, who diagnosed the rash as eczema and prescribed a lotion and hydrocortisone cream.
However, when Danielle applied the lotion to Lola’s body, the baby’s skin immediately reacted.
She said: ‘Straight away she flared up with this bright red rash.
‘We took her to the doctors and they advised using the hydrocortisone for a week before returning to the lotion, which briefly helped, but she still came up in the rash and it just got worse and worse.
‘She was getting so upset, it was awful.’
Lola, a formerly happy baby, was left constantly screaming and trying to scratch her bright red skin.
‘She would be screaming and there was nothing I could do to console her, while my two-year-old was running around wanting my attention too. It was really hard,’ recalled Danielle.
‘I felt so guilty and helpless. Whatever I did seemed to be wrong.’
In a last-ditch attempt to stop her daughter from making her skin bleed, Danielle started to put socks on Lola’s hands.
‘It’s a time when you want them to learn to use their hands, but it was all I could do to stop her scratching,’ she said.
‘I would try to alternate between her wearing a baby grow and using the gloves.’
Even simple tasks like bath time or trying to change Lola’s nappy or became an ordeal.
Danielle said: ‘She would start scratching her skin, so I would ask my little boy to hold her hands, then I could change her nappy without her scratching.
‘We used to use normal baby bath stuff, but that reacted with her skin, so we just used water, but it never felt like we were cleaning her properly.
‘Joey and Lola used to bathe together, too, but we had to stop that because the bath stuff we used for him would upset her skin.
‘I also started to bathe Lola every other day, so it didn’t dry her skin out.
‘Even when I took Joey to soft play, I avoided Lola going in the ball pit, because I was worried her skin was so raw and prone to infection.’
After two months of this stress and worry, Danielle began to fear that her baby’s skin would be this way forever.
She said: ‘We booked our wedding last month for February 2025, and I started to wonder if Lola would have bad skin on the day and if she would have a flare-up.
‘It sounds silly, but it goes through your mind.
‘People were saying she would grow out of it, but looking at how bad it was, it was hard to imagine that.’
‘I was caught between a rock and a hard place,’ she added.
‘I would put cream on her skin and it would flare up, all red and swollen, but when I didn’t, her skin would be so dry it started to chap and bleed.
‘If she scratched herself in the slightest, she would just start bleeding.
‘I started to think I would never find anything to make Lola’s skin better.’
That was until two weeks ago when one of Danielle’s friends recommended Balmond’s Skin Salvation, which costs just £7.99 for 30ml.
Danielle didn’t get her hopes up, but she decided to give the cream a try.
‘I thought there was nothing to lose, but I didn’t have much hope,’ she said.
‘After a patch test, I put it all over her body and the next day, there was no redness or dryness.
‘After two weeks, the eczema has completely gone.
‘It’s like she never had any problems.
‘She finally has normal baby skin, which is what I always wanted.
‘It’s just made me so happy. I can’t stop looking at her skin.’
Danielle has since stocked up on a bigger jar of the cream and is considering putting in a monthly subscription.
She said: ‘I was at the point where I felt like giving up but then found this cream and it has made such a difference.’
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