Haycox web site.

Ian Haycox

Elizabeth Haycox

Hugh Haycox

A new life in France - goodbye to eczema

Ian and I have two children, Elizabeth is 5 and Hugh is 3. We have recently moved to France to start a completely different life - slower pace and more quality time with the children. For reasons that we do not understand - our children's eczema has virtually disappeared.

Elizabeth developed eczema at six months old and it steadily became worse. When she was 18 months old, frustrated with the support from my GP, I attended a Good Housekeeping Magazine seminar about Eczema and wet wrapping. There I listened to representatives from the National Eczema Society and Guy's Hospital who demonstrated the wet wrapping technique. I was sold on the idea and asked my chemist to get hold of Tubifast bandages for me.

After one night of wet wraps it became apparent that this would revolutionize our lives - it was in the heat of the summer and wet wraps solve a number of problems:

1. the creams were absorbed much more efficiently
2. the wet bandages helped to cool down Elizabeth's burning and irritated skin
3. the bandages stopped her from getting to the skin to scratch
4. the sheets were still clean from cream and blood in the morning.

When Hugh was a baby he was clear from eczema on his first birthday and I thought that we had struck it lucky with our second child, however at the age of 15 months, he developed a virus on holiday and eczema flared all over his body, just like Elizabeth. It followed exactly the same path and he, too required wet wrapping.

Like everyone else with eczema, my children suffered more a some times than at others - my husband, Ian also suffers (he was in Guy's Hospital when he was a child having clay bandages). But we found that everyone's eczema flared up together - we tried to locate the problem - was it pollen?, was it diet? we kept food diaries, we visited specialists, the children had allergy tests, we visited homeopaths, we tried every suggestion that seem to be forthcoming from relations, friends, how many times had we heard the story "My daughter/sister/nephew/uncle tried this and it completely cured the eczema" I know that people are trying to help but it is really frustrating when you try one thing after another and nothing works.

Just before Elizabeth was three, she became very poorly indeed - she had terrible eczema and was also very ill. On the night before her birthday, I recognised that she had developed Eczema Herpeticum and I remembered the warnings from the seminar that I attended when she was 18 months old. I took her to hospital and it was clear that she was very seriously ill, the sores had covered her head and neck and were now appearing on her arms and legs. We had a very painful and distressing time whilst the drip was inserted into her arm and she was watched very carefully for 48 hours by which time she was visibly better. The herpeticum has returned on a number of occasions, but I am much more aware now and it can be treated orally if we catch it quick enough.

During this time, I was trying to work and manage my family. Although I had excellent child care, I felt that there was no substitute for myself and decided to give up work. This big change for me and the prospect of Elizabeth starting school in the UK, gave us the courage to seek a life where Ian could also spend more time with the children - he was very busy as a self employed IT consultant.

After a holiday in France, we decided that we should look at moving to France to give the children a chance to be bilingual, as well as being a tighter family unit. The children were at the perfect age - both preschool, so with hardly time to draw breath we put our house on the market and sold within 24 hours and moved us and our furniture to a rented house in North Brittany. We thought that we would try to find a house with outbuildings that we could use to create gites or country cottages, so that the income from renting these out would provide our living.

Within a week of moving we found the perfect house in the same village as our rented house. We put in an offer that was accepted and the children started at the village school the next day. Life was tough to begin with - the children did find it difficult and didn't quite understand that everyone spoke a different language. But the key thing was that the eczema was getting better - day by day it slowly improved - it could not have been stress related, as life was very different and very demanding. Perhaps it was that the rented house was all very clean with no carpets (although we had replaced most of ours in England with hard floors) and all the furniture was new. As our move to our permanent house drew nearer and the children were almost clear of eczema, we both wondered what would happen.

We moved in and the eczema has remained at bay - occasionally we get a few little itches, but just nothing on the scale of how it was in England. Within a month, I had thrown out all the wet wraps and the children had worn pyjamas for the first time in their lives rather than cotton sleepsuits with mittens built in. This meant that at the age of 5, Elizabeth was able to go to bed without wearing a nappy - she feels so grown up, she was always very self-conscious of this when we had visitors.

We still have no idea why the eczema stopped, so many things have changed, pollution, water, diet, school etc. Life is still quite stressful - we have created three beautiful gites (holiday cottages) in six months, which has been really hard work for us all. Ian and I have been working around the clock and the children have not had much of our attention. But now the gites are finished and we are having some lovely holiday guests - often with children for Elizabeth and Hugh to play with. An advantage for them is that we have 4 acres of grounds where we have created a massive play area for all the families on holiday, but which our children can use, too. We are spending much more time together as a family and this may be one of the reasons the eczema has subsided. The way of life in France is very relaxed and geared towards families. For us it is so satisfying to give people happy holidays as our job, and the children enjoy speaking English to our guests and French to their friends at school.