In the last couple of weeks, we noticed the baby was developing a rash on his face.  The first couple of days, I didn’t think much about it, just that he must have scratched himself somehow.  But then it got worse and worse, and his face was looking very blotchy, clearly eczema, which indicated to me an allergic response to something in his diet.

He’s now almost 7 months, and had only had tiny amounts of food other than nursing, so I was pretty sure it was something coming through my milk.  I looked at what I was eating to see what could be transferring to him.

I’m fortunate that I eat very simply, no processed food at all so there are no hidden ingredients to try to identify.  It was pretty easy for me to look at my diet of the last couple of weeks and see what was different from before that.  The only things I could see were milk and coconut oil.  I had run out of milk for a couple of weeks, and didn’t have any until I stocked up again.  But since  I’ve been drinking raw milk since he was born without any signs of problem, it didn’t seem that could be the issue. 

That left me with coconut oil as the culprit, which didn’t seem likely since if he was allergic to tree nuts, he should be reacting to the almonds and cashews that I regularly eat, but he doesn’t.  I recently upped my intake of coconut oil to 3 tablespoons a day, rather suddenly deciding to use it to replace all the fats I was using, and it was during this period that his skin got rashy.

I stopped eating coconut oil on Friday afternoon, when it first occurred to me, and his skin has gotten steadily better since then.  But this leaves me with a big question.  I still don’t believe it was the oil itself that was the problem.  So what actually caused the rash? 

Here are my thoughts.  Coconut oil is a powerful anti-fungal and therefore kills off yeast inside the body (among other things).  When the yeast dies off, a person will initially seem to be getting worse before it looks better, because the die off manifests itself as a number of unpleasant symptoms (skin eruptions are one).  When a mother has a yeast overgrowth (candida – as virtually everyone nowadays has), it’s passed on to her infant before he’s born, which is how a nursing baby would aquire it. 

So the coconut oil was doing something – what I’m unsure about is: 1) was my baby reacting to toxins my body was throwing off as the coconut oil helped my body heal, and therefore the rash was caused from those toxins (in which case slowing down or eliminating coconut oil is the path to take) ; or 2) was he himself having his internal yeast killed off, and the rash was a manifestation of die off – in which case it would benefit him to continue to help his body detoxify (and continuing the oil would be the right approach)?

I don’t have an answer for this, and don’t have anyone to ask.  I’m delighted that his skin is looking better again.  At this point I’m thinking that in a few weeks, I’ll slowly reintroduce coconut oil in my diet.  The problem might have been that it was a sudden change in my diet, and by easing into it, I can watch his response and back off immediately if I see it leading to a problem again.  If the issue was die off, going slowly would cause the die off to be less drastic and he would still benefit from the healing properties of coconut oil.

Avivah