From Severe Infant Eczema to Clear Skin and Reduced Parental Stress

Well, my son is now over a year and we've seen so much improvement for him. He's growing well, he's eating well, he's doing well overall. We're resolving kind of the last little bit of eczema on his skin but it's not anywhere near like it was before. We've made a lot of lifestyle changes. He's able to do a lot of the things a normal toddler would do and I'm not as worried. I'm not constantly stressed, wondering if this flare is because of X, Y or Z thing. I basically know. I basically have a sense that he's sensitive to dairy and so we really limit it. But otherwise he's doing well and it's good to see him doing so well. I'm Aimee Garden and I'm from Leesburg, Virginia. Before the Eczema Transformation Program, my husband and I were new parents. We had a three-month-old baby and a huge eczema flare when he was very young. By seeing some of the resources from Dr. Ana-Maria on her website, I had the confidence that she's dealt with this before and she's dealt with it from a whole body standpoint. I knew there was a diet component for my son's eczema, even though he was a baby. And so, I felt like I couldn't get answers anywhere else for the whole body. I could maybe patch it up using local doctors but I needed more support than what they could provide. If there was going to be a barrier it would have been the cost. And that was a hard conversation between my husband and I. We had to sort out our priorities for the year. He's our first baby. Having a baby, in general, is expensive and then you have a health issue on top of it. But we were able to use some FSA funds that helped defray the cost in our situation and also we realized that we'd rather deal with this, rather than it being a perpetual part of our family's stress and part of our family's budget to pay for covering up the eczema. Well, we got started with the program a couple weeks after the flare was really bad. We tried working with a local doctor who really couldn't - he couldn't help us. He prescribed some steroid creams but I wasn't sure if I wanted to use them. There wasn't a lot of guidance around whether or not that would actually help him. There was questions about whether he needed to be dairy-free or allergen-free or allergy tested. We just didn't know where to start. So, before taking all those paths we went ahead and went all in and joined the Eczema Transformation Program. What surprised us the most about the program was there was just a lot of support, more than I realized when I was signing up. Daily check-ins if you wanted them, weekly posts, community of fellow moms and dads who are dealing with this, that you could reach out to. I did feel very supported and I no longer felt alone in it. It was really hard at the beginning when I was talking to fellow first-time parents and they had never dealt with anything like this. Even parents who had multiple children had no clue how to deal with a really severe eczema case and it was nice to feel like other people were going through this and we had each other's back. I think, for us... it was a lot of money. It was a sacrifice to go through the program but I would make the same decision again. I didn't know where to start and I didn't know where to turn to and he really needed the support. I don't know of another program out there that takes the whole body and the whole system into account from the standpoint of children, of babies - even as young as three months old. I gained so much support and resources from the program and for anyone else who is where I am at or where I was, where you didn't know what to do - You thought there was probably something better out there than immunosuppressants and steroid creams, there's probably something underneath going on and you just wanted something better - this is a great program. It's well worth the time, the commitment, the investment. And it does have the information you're looking for. And it does have the support you need. Can be a lonely journey and a stressful one and eczema is a systemic and complex health issue not many doctors are equipped to handle. Dr. Ana-Maria has so much experience and her team is so well-versed in all the ways to help your child or yourself whoever is dealing with this.