81: My Daughter's Eczema Journey: What's Actually Working (And the Emotional Toll)
In this deeply personal episode of The Nourishing Autism Podcast, Brittyn opens up about her daughter Nora’s intense journey with eczema, from hospital stays and repeated flare-ups to the emotional toll of feeling unseen by conventional medicine. You’ll hear the reality of navigating trial-and-error of diet changes, the search for answers in both functional and conventional healthcare, and the breakthrough moments that finally brought healing and hope.
Brittyn also shares what actually worked - from gut-healing strategies and topical support to the emotional work it takes to keep going when nothing seems to help. If you’ve ever questioned your intuition or felt dismissed by providers, this episode is a reminder: trust your gut, keep searching, and don’t give up.
📌 Show Notes & Resources:
Connect with Dr. Michelle Young, the pediatric naturopath who played a key role in Nora’s healing journey, on Instagram: @dr.michelle_young
Join the Nourishing Autism Collective to start getting nutrition support today!
Follow @AutismDietitian on Instagram
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TRANSCRIPT
Hi, I'm Brittyn, a Registered Dietitian and autism sibling. I have a passion for helping parents of neurodivergent kids navigate nutrition and wellness for their child, one small step at a time. Here we'll explore practical nutrition tips, learn from top autism experts, break down the newest research, and share inspirational stories that will empower you to utilize nutrition to help your child feel their best and thrive.
Listen in while picking kids up from school, sitting in a therapy waiting room, taking a quick walk or wherever you find yourself, looking for some inspiration and a friend to guide you along this journey. This is Nourishing Autism.
Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Nourishing Autism Podcast. It has been an amazing past few weeks getting started back with season three of the podcast. I've missed it so much and it's gotten so much great feedback over the past few weeks and I've just loved hearing from you. For those of you who have been listening in and some of our new listeners as well, welcome to the podcast.
I am currently getting ready to plan for the rest of season three. And so if anybody has different topics that you'd like us to dive into, please message me on Instagram at @autismdietitian, and I would love to do it for you. So today we are digging into a pretty personal topic, but something that I think could be really helpful for many of you out there who have kids that struggle with eczema.
I personally have never had eczema. Neither has my husband or our son, and so this has been the biggest learning curve. As a practitioner, I've never specialized in eczema either, and I really work with kids and up, so I've had to learn a lot over the past, oh goodness, 9, 10 months at this point. So our daughter, Nora, she was born in October of 2024. She's about to turn a year old and in January, some really severe eczema started happening, and when I tell you it has been the most stressful year of my life dealing with this eczema. It has been the hardest thing as a mom to watch her struggle with this and not having an answer.
So for those of you who also know eczema, you know exactly what I'm talking about and I wanna walk you through what I've done, what has happened. I've been taking you all alongside the journey throughout this entire process. Honestly, everything started last December, when she was only six weeks old and everything leading up to the eczema starting and exploding and then getting better.
Now we're at the part where we're mostly managing it, but I have been sharing a little bit along the way on social media, but it's really only scraped the surface. Honestly, it's affected me so much mentally that getting on social media, especially between February and June, I just could barely even log on and it's, you know, hard to talk about because it was so bad.
And then along with being postpartum and having, you know, a four to eight month old at the time, it was just so much. All that I could do to just show up every day for my kids and do the best that I could, social media wasn't a part of that. So I am excited to share about it.
So let's walk it back to the very beginning, October, 2024. She was born, she was perfect. A chunky little girl, latched right away. I haven't given you guys actually an update as I'm saying this, I realize. The last episode of season two was all about my birth with Sam and how it was 50 hours and five hours of pushing, and it was, just crazy. And I was really hoping that this was not going to be the same thing. And thankfully it was not. I, almost went two weeks late with Sam, but with her, I went four days and, I had a nine hour labor with 10 minutes of pushing. So that certainly beats out Sam's birth. And so, yeah, right away she was great.
She was a sweet little girl. No issues, no complications. We went home early. Now from the beginning, like when she was two to three weeks old, she started getting like super goopy eyes, like yellow crusted all over the top. And our pediatrician said, oh, she has tear ducts.
They'll resolve on their own by one year. There's nothing that you need to do, which by the way, for a year, that's just crazy. And I was like, there has to be something else. So I was putting breast milk in them, I was putting hot compresses. It just never seemed to get better. And she just always had like thick yellow,
goop, especially in her right eye. And they just always kept saying, you know, it's tear, ducts. So I just eventually had to let it go.
Now at the very beginning of December, we took her into the ER because she was running a fever, which anything over 100.4 for newborn is a medical emergency. And she was having chest retractions, which I had noted at home. And we went in and they said, oh, it's likely RSV that's going around right now.
Let's do a swab and test, but we can basically guarantee that it's RSV. And they were like, well, it's probably gonna get worse before it gets better, but go ahead and take her home. Here's what to look for. Here's how to pay attention to her respiratory rate and what numbers you should be considering.
Well the next day, she had chest retractions again and a really high respiratory rate, even though her fever was under control. And that was one of the signs that they said to bring her in. So I brought her in again and she was admitted to Children's, not in the ICU, just on the floor. We ended up staying for five days and they just had a ton of suctioning due to just like really thick mucus.
And it actually ended up being COVID, not RSV, which is really interesting. A lot of the doctors were saying at the time that they were actually seeing, there was like a new variant of COVID that was causing some really thick mucus and it was just annoying for adults. But for babies, especially infants, they are not able to clear that thick like tenacious mucus.
And so especially, I learned this while I was there, that I think it's at eight weeks old where babies can start breathing out of their mouth. But leading up to that, they're almost exclusively breathing through their nose. And so because she was six weeks old, she couldn't even breathe. And so they had to do some really thick suctioning and thankfully that's all they had to do at the time was just suctioning.
And while we were there, I did notice eczema popping up on the sides of her face. And I hadn't noticed that before, but I was thinking, you know, this is some kind of viral rash. So I would moisturize it. It never got better when we were there, but eventually it went away and I don't really remember when it actually went away.
We left children's unfortunately only to go back the very next day because while her congestion had resolved, because she had to be suctioned so frequently, so hard, like leading up to the time we were discharged, she had something called rebound congestion and it was just her nasal passage was so inflamed that she couldn't breathe from that.
So we got admitted again to Children's and I was there with her for a few days and then they got the rebound inflammation under control. And we went home. Now, throughout this time, she was great. I saw some little spots of eczema, which we called Nummular eczema. It's like little coin shaped spots. And my son Sam, actually had those.
He had two little nummular spots on his chest as a baby. It started when he started teething and so they were like, oh, it's agitated by the drool that was on his chest. And so they were kind of hard to get to go away, but I did not wanna use a steroid on them. I was trying all the natural approaches and for him, it never bothered him.
So it eventually just went away on its own when he stopped teething. So I saw those little coins on her. I have a photo actually from one of her well exams that we talked about, nummular eczema during that time. And they said, you know, it's so cold here in Colorado, it's so dry. Really don't worry about it.
It's not a big deal. So that's what I did. I was like, well, it'll probably just go away like Sam's did. Well, she also had some cradle cap at that time that just was, it wouldn't really go away. Like it wasn't that bad though. But after Christmas we all got Norovirus. That was fun. And then in January, I saw those chest retractions again for her.
And then at the beginning of January, all of a sudden her face like broke out in this big rash all around her eye, inside of her face. I'd never seen anything like that. Now that I look back at photos, can see this like small circle popping up on her chest too, that it's so vague that you can barely see it unless you're like really looking.
I definitely didn't notice it at the time. And then her cradle cap just like exploded. It was everywhere over her head. It was like thick yellow. It was crazy. Well, the night after she got this huge rash on her face, I woke up, I went to go feed her and she was like, completely drenched and I was like, what in the world?
So I looked back on our monitor and she had thrown up her full feed overnight. I was like, wow. She just had a huge, it was like projectile spit up. Which she did sometimes, but not that bad. I have a really strong letdown and so it wasn't uncommon for her to spit up some of that, but not like that.
That morning she woke up and I saw some contractions again. She was doing this weird grunting and breathing thing, and I was just like, this is not good. So I took her into Children's. I thought it was just gonna be a quick urgent care visit, and they were like, no, no, no. Back to the ER you go.
They suctioned her, put her on like a high flow cannula, oxygen, put an IV in her face. It was like zero to 60. She was like, okay. And then this rash exploded on her face. And then she was in the ER and before I knew it, they were putting that huge mask on her whole face. And, the ambulance came, we had to be transferred from one of the smaller campuses of Children's to the large campus. And I will never forget that car ride. I couldn't ride in the ambulance with her. I could only ride in the front and we needed a car and I was by myself. And so I drove behind the ambulance on the way to Children's, which was a 40 minute drive, and it was just like maybe the hardest, like worst 40 minutes ever.
I get to the hospital and they have her there and she's like on her high- flow everything. And at that point they were like, we suspect this is RSV and she has RSV bronchiolitis. And she was admitted to the pediatric ICU, where she ended up being there for six days. And the reason they think that RSV hit her so hard, well, first of all,
I have a son who is two years old in daycare and certainly loves to bring some of those viruses home. And what they were saying is that she just got unlucky twice where she got COVID and then, I guess it takes at least eight weeks for your lungs to fully recover.
And so when she got RSV, her lungs weren't fully recovered yet, and so it hit her just extra hard. Even her right upper lung collapsed. She had fevers for days. They had to suction her all the time. They had to do something called CPT, which is where they have this little tool that they hit on her chest to help break up the mucus.
During this time she had rashes on the side of her face, this weird eczema thing down on both arms. It was like the weirdest, like it looked geometric. I don't know how to explain. It was the weirdest looking eczema ever. And at the time, I mean the major focus was just making sure that she was gonna be okay, like respiratory wise, that we saw that eczema, but we were just like that's not the main issue right now.
They eventually started her on some antibiotics, which we talked about for so long, because as a dietitian I avoid unnecessary use of antibiotics at any point. But what they were worried about is because her temperatures were staying so high, that that's uncharacteristic of RSV at the point that she was still having those fevers.
They're like, it should have gone down by now. And so they were like, we're worried that pneumonia could be creeping in, and that's the last thing that her lungs need right now. And so we decided to put her on it after weighing the pros and cons. And then from there you know, thankfully she didn't ever have pneumonia, which was the good thing. Throughout this entire time she was exclusively breastfed. I was like pumping around the clock. She did have a tube feed set up because she was on a mask where they couldn't feed her by mouth because of risk of aspiration, which is where the breast milk would go into her lungs.
And so she was fed during that time. Bless the dietitians at Colorado Children's because, I had them on my team the whole time to get her on that tube feed as quickly as possible. And it was just so nice to have, I mean, I will say the children's PICU staff. My goodness, we had the most amazing experience in a terrible situation.
Shout out to them. Once we moved to the regular floor, we were able to step down from there and then discharge home. But once we got home, her skin was mostly clear except for this big spot on her chest, her elbows, and then a little bit on the side of her face that gradually got worse and worse over the following days.
She weirdly started getting all these ingrown fingernails. I know that's a random thing, but I'm reading my notes. I just couldn't understand why it kept popping up on her fingers and her toes, and then her eczema on her arms started flaring even worse, and then all of a sudden all these patches on her back showed up and she all of a sudden is just
covered in eczema still with this one huge patch on her chest, tummy area. Her skin starts flaking, like it was crazy. Her cradle cap is like this thick, yellow consistency. It was just wild. And so on top of all the stress of her just coming out of the PICU, then it's like everything that is now flaring.
And so I'm on high alert of course, and so stressed and thankfully she's doing well. But as the rashes start to get worse, I decide, well, why don't I try some dietary approaches? I'm going to take out dairy and see how that goes. So I took out dairy. I didn't really notice any difference after about two weeks.
And so I was like, you know what? I don't know that this actually is making a difference. I am limited in my diet and if I don't have to be, I'm not going to be. So that day I added back in some pizza. The very next day, she had this huge flare all over her body. And so I thought, okay, well, you know, dairy was working, I just hadn't given it enough time, so I went dairy free.
Now all of the sudden things seem to be getting worse and she's getting more rashes. She's just covered in them. Her scalp is flaking and it's just, I'm looking at photos right now. And you can see some on my Instagram, if you go to Nora's skin highlight and just these red, quarter sized patches, I mean, 20, 30, or more of them and her back is just completely covered. I end up going gluten, egg, soy, nut free. I took out everything because I was so determined. Well, first of all, I felt very out of control, and so it was like anything that I can do to help her, I'm gonna do it.
And so took out everything from my diet, which breastfeeding and trying to keep up enough calories while being on such a limited diet is definitely hard. And adds an extra mental load. And after a while I just didn't feel like anything was getting better and went to our pediatrician and I had seen two dermatologists and both of them, all they told me was steroid. And I was like, there has to be another way. There has to be some other option. Eventually she was just miserable. Thankfully she didn't seem to scratch or itch too bad, and they said that maybe she's too young developmentally to feel how itchy she really is, and she may just wake up one day and realize that she's itchy which was honestly one of the worst things to imagine.
And so after a while I decided, you know what? I've been trying to avoid a steroid for so long, but this really calls for more than I can do on my own right now. So we started a steroid and were able to clear that up. It took about two weeks of being on it to really actually clear her up. We ended up going out of town right when we finished that and the day we came back, she had one of the worst flares I've ever seen. And her eyes were completely red. They were gooping worse than they had been. It was just, I was like, what is happening? And so then I started worrying, is it our house? Like, why is she flaring so bad when she comes home? Was it just like enough time to be off the steroid and come back?
We had been in Florida, so was it like, it was so humid there and it's so dry in Colorado. Like why did she flare? Well after all of this, I already had been begging my pediatrician to do some allergy testing, but they kept saying, oh, she's too young to do allergy testing, which is true. They really want kids to be at least six months of age, and then ideally for environmental allergies over the age of two to be the most accurate.
But I was just like, we are desperate. Please test this girl for allergies. If it's something unexpected that I'm eating. Or that she's coming in contact with. So finally I found an allergist who would do testing and they couldn't even do skin prick testing because her back was so flared. We had to go in and get a blood draw for her.
And they tested milk, wheat, soy, eggs, nuts, corn, some fish, coconut, oat rice, and dog dander, dust mites, which we really don't have here in Colorado. But everything came back negative except for dog dander and almonds. And unfortunately we do have a dog, a golden retriever at that, who is a high shedding dog.
And we panicked of course, and we thought could it have been the dog this whole time? And almonds, which I had to have been eating a lot of them going dairy free. I was doing almond based products. So at that point I eliminated almonds. That was the only nut I was actually eating at the time.
And then we really cracked down on the dog. Not allowed upstairs, vacuuming every single day, brushing not allowed in her space, like out of the house as much as possible. So over time things would get better. And then they would get worse, and then they would get a little better, and then it would get worse again.
I tried removing rice, chicken and beef even, because I saw that, I was in a Facebook group that I had to eventually leave for my own mental health. But just watching other parents go through it with their kids and what food triggers were causing their children to flare that were kind of unsuspecting.
We tried a bunch of different creams. At one point, they were like, well, maybe it's possible it's fungal, it's her cradle cap that's expanded throughout the rest of her body. And I even read online that the yeast that causes cradle cap, some people can have an extreme immune reaction to that.
That didn't work. We tried switching up our detergents. I tried all the different natural brands before we finally switched to a Free and Clear, which was something that I just had to give up because my natural minded approach, like we typically try to use the lowest ingredient, lowest chemical options in our home.
But she did do better with that.
We tried Epsom salt baths. We tried dead sea salt baths. We tried apple cider vinegar baths, which actually I do think helped for a short period of time. What the allergists were telling me, that had done allergy testing for me is that they didn't think food was any part of it and they thought I should just add in every single food back into my diet overnight and then it would be fine. And I was like, I respectfully am not going to follow that advice because that does not feel aligned for me.
They were pushing me to give her peanuts right away because they were like, she's gonna be at risk to develop peanut allergy. And I was like, that just doesn't feel right to me to give this like incredibly inflamed baby at like five months old, an incredibly allergenic food. That's not what her body is needing to heal.
So you know. Throughout all of this just decided, well, once I finally realized that this wasn't just going to go away, because the allergist kept saying, well, it's just postviral. It's postviral. It's just gonna go away next month. So I just kept holding on to the fact that it would probably go away next month.
And I just kept having this hope that it was just going to magically disappear. But then when it started getting into April, I realized this is not just gonna go away on its own. We're gonna have to do some major work. And because she had been on an antibiotic and had had back to back sicknesses,
the conclusion that I came to is, I think that she had an underdeveloped immune system just for being a baby that was just set on fire and then a gut microbiome that was then put into a dysbiotic, imbalanced, state from the antibiotic and things just manifested, like exploded. And so I eventually started seeing a pediatric naturopath.
She's amazing. Dr. Michelle Young, on Instagram. Many of my clients had seen her, so I decided to reach out to her and knew her personally at that point. And we did a GI map together, which is a stool panel, which I didn't even know that you could do when baby's that young.
Again, I specialize in kids two and up and I run those on my clients all the time. But, didn't know that you could do that on a baby. I won't even talk you through what it was like getting that sample from a breastfed baby. We won't even go there. Anyway, we got the sample back. It showed that she had a ton of inflammation in her gut.
it showed imbalance of bacteria there. It showed us a lot, and so based on her results, we started some new supplements. Some were herbal, some were certain vitamins and nutrients, and we started a different topical routine. One part of that was the apple cider vinegar baths, and things started changing for the first time.
Things started getting better and it took some time to really say, wow, okay, wait. Like are things actually better right now? And I would say in June and July is when that like drastically changed and we actually started getting some breaks where she would look okay. I still had to deploy the steroid at some points as a rescue.
I really decided at one point around that time that I was gonna stop feeling bad for using the steroid because there was a lot of internal healing happening and the steroid gave a lot of relief cause she ended up being itchy as she got older. The steroid gave her a lot of relief and external healing while we were able to do the work on the inside.
And so I decided to let go of the guilt of using it and follow it the way that I was instructed, but also be doing some big work on the inside for her, getting her gut in a good place, helping her be more balanced and help calm her immune system down. It took a lot of time. But it is night and day.
Sometimes I still have to use a little bit of steroid to get like a big flare to come down that sometimes we don't know, it came out of nowhere. So I still think that there are a lot of unknowns at this point, but we have been able to narrow it down that eggs are definitely a trigger for her.
Without a doubt, she flares every time. Dairy is not a trigger. I've been able to add back some sourdough and she seems to do fine, but I keep off conventional gluten. I have decided I want to keep breastfeeding her.
I was able to breastfeed my son until he was 17 months and I was a few months pregnant with Nora, so I decided to stop at that point. But she turns one, I would love to continue doing that for her immune system and I don't have a stop date in mind, but I would love to continue to do that as long as I can to give her that boost.
Some people have asked me, well, wouldn't you just consider formula? But we have to go through the whole thing to vet a new formula. And that's just not what I personally choose to do. I want to breastfeed her and I love the connection that we have and wanna be able to provide her that immune support.
So that's not my choice, but I fully support anybody who does go down that route.
At this point, we have actually been advised by many practitioners including functional medicine practitioners that have said, do not get rid of the dog. The dog is not the root issue. The root issue is the immune system on fire and the gut imbalance, which is causing her to react to lots of things incorrectly like dogs, like eggs. And so I had changed my mindset to how I always tell my clients to view these things, but it's just different when it's your own and you're just like such in panic mode that you don't have a second to like step back and look at it as a whole.
But sometimes I would put on my dietitian cap and say, okay, what would you tell a client in this situation? And that actually really helped me like step into my logical brain and step a little bit outside of that like emotional panic. So at this point is October. We've been on this journey since January, so nine months, and it really is night and day. I mean, she looks great on most days, but we still do experience the occasional flare and the occasional bad flare. And so we're still figuring it out, but we're moving forward and I'm choosing to believe that every flare is data. That when she does have a flare,
that we have something to gain from it to better narrow down what is causing it. And I continue to view this, that it's rooted in the gut. There's a huge connection between eczema and the gut. And I choose to continue looking deeper into getting her immune system and her gut in an even better place to also just set her up for success in the future as well.
We've put a huge focus on nourishing food and foods that are very high nutrient, lots of veggies, lots of meats, lots of, variety within those and helping her get as many nutrients from her diet as possible. We did tons of broths to help strengthen her gut lining, get her the right nutrients, and really view our approach as food first, but then also deploying supplements and topicals whenever it was necessary
One thing I meant to mention as well is that we did look into mold for our home too. We did an ERMI, and it just didn't seem that that was the right path to be going down. so we decided to go down some other paths as well. Cause I figured I would get that question. If anybody is in eczema, you know that mold can be a huge trigger for a lot of people.
But yeah, that's where we are now, and I'm hoping that even in the next six months, we're gonna drastically see bigger and better changes from here so that we can even get further and further apart from flares and have smaller and smaller flares when we do. And I will continue to keep you guys in the loop.
I always love hearing what's worked for some of you all. It never hurts to all support each other, and I'm sure there's so much that we've done too that I haven't even shared on this podcast. I am kind of racking my brain through some ideas right now, but I'm sure eventually I'll come and do a part two maybe, early next year to share where we are then and what we've done and what's worked and what hasn't.
And just wanted to say for those of you who have me on social media and have sent me the most encouraging messages, especially those of you who have been through this, I appreciate you so much. Like in those dark days between February and June. That really, really got me through. So sending you so much love and I'm hopeful that for those of you who are also going through a really tough time with eczema, that things are looking up.
I encourage you to look deeper into the gut even when practitioners are telling you that that's not it. And unfortunately, every allergist and dermatologist that I had continued to share with me that eczema is just genetic and all there is is topical steroids and Zyrtec, and I chose to just not believe that. And I just chose to not accept that. I'm sure there's some validity, but I know it's deeper than that in getting any of the conventional doctors that we saw to recognize that there's any kind of gut connection to eczema or that this is connected.
It just was awful. The last dermatologist that I went to and emphasize on last, because it made me just almost wanna completely turn away from seeing a dermatologist in the future. She just didn't listen to me at all to the point where she just monologued almost the entire time that we were there and talked about
topical steroids basically only, and I just sat there in her office and just silently cried and she just looked at me and kept talking and left the room after she was done. And it was just the most like, dehumanizing thing ever. I just couldn't believe that she would treat a patient like that. And all of that to say if you have ever felt unheard or unseen or just like people aren't seeing it the way you are and that you have a gut feeling, I say follow it.
I say trust your gut. I say, look for someone else. Look for the people who are going to help support you and guide you down the right track. And you know, all of this is really hard. I, you know, got back into therapy during this time and I swear she helped me so much during that time, really being able to work my way through it and talk my way through it in some really tough times.
And would also recommend that for any parents out there that are also struggling, whether it's your child's eczema or something else. That was one of the best things that I did for myself during this entire time. Well, thanks everyone who's stuck in for this long. I know this is a pretty long episode.
But I appreciate you for listening and for all the love that you've sent already and any feedback or tips I'll take, we're still in it, we're still figuring it out and I'm hopeful to be able to get to a place where we don't even have to think about eczema anymore, that that's not even a word that we use in our household.
So that's what I'm manifesting for myself. I hope you enjoyed this episode. It's kind of nice being real with you all, not that I'm not real, but it's kind of nice talking about something personal. I love talking about autism and nutrition. Of course it's what I do for a living and I love it so much, but letting you in on what's been going on
the past year, felt kind of therapeutic in a way too. So thank you all for listening and for subscribing to the podcast. And if you haven't and you're willing, I would be so grateful if you left a review.
If you wanna share five stars, I would be so grateful. I'm continuing to push this podcast to hope that it gets in the hands of the right families that need it at the time that are looking for support with nutrition for autism, or their selective eater and sensory processing. I appreciate your support in helping me reach that goal.
Have a great week. I'll be back next week, and we will dig back in to what the research says for nutrition and autism and nourishing your kiddo from the inside out.
Transcribed by Descript
About Brittyn Coleman, MS, RDN/LD
Brittyn Coleman, MS, RDN/LD, is a distinguished Registered Dietitian and Autism Nutrition Expert, known for her innovative, sensory-friendly feeding approach to nutrition for children on the autism spectrum. As the founder of the Nourishing Autism Collective, and as an autism sibling herself, Brittyn brings both professional expertise and personal understanding to her work. She empowers families with her expert guidance, helping children receive essential nutrients for optimal health and development. Her strategies are tailored to the unique dietary needs and sensory preferences of each child.
Brittyn's influence extends beyond her membership site through her active social media presence and her popular podcast, 'Nourishing Autism'. Her educational content on Instagram, YouTube, and other platforms has established her as a leading voice in autism nutrition, providing valuable resources, practical advice, and a supportive community for parents and professionals.
