hi my daughter had pretty bad eczema as a baby (probably wouldn't describe it as severe tho), we didn't do swimming lessons til abut a year ago (which its cleared up a lot as she's gotten older). However we are from Darwin (living down south now) and my parents live in Cairns so we are are always going up there and do a lot of swimming when we're there. I don't know if there is as much chlorine in the pools etc we swam in there as there is in an indoor pool (assuming thats where you are taking DD for lessons), but her eczema would flare up big time after a swim in chlorinated water. I never tried a barrier cream or anything, didn't think to do that! We had her 1st b'day party at a water park thing in Darwin and by the end of the day her skin was red raw from the eczema, it was heartbreaking, but worth it

Everytime we did take her swimming I'd make sure she had a shower in fresh water straight away and put her moisturising cream all over her, with the elecon (prescription cream) on the bad bits.

Personally I'd probably leave it a bit longer and hope it clears up a bit, shes got heaps of time to do swimming. You could take her yourself every couple of weeks to familiarise her with water anyway, at least it wouldn't be every week. I know kids love swimming but I found my daughters eczema was a constant source of stress for me and did e'thing I could to just keep it under control. Except in Darwin/Cairns when I couldn't bear for her to miss out when all the other kids were swimming.