Winter colds are hard on everyone, but especially our little ones. Watching them helplessly as they cough and cough, trying to breathe, trying to loosen whatever is tickling their throat, is hard on anyone within hearing distance. It can make you feel helpless. I have no qualms about calling the pediatrician (except maybe at 3am), but after the 5th bout of childhood coughing colds, we learned what to do at home, until we can go to the doctor the next day. Reaching for strong over the counter medicine is one route, but I’m often concerned about the danger of mixing medicines in the middle of the night, and judging doses and dosage times coherently on a sleep-deprived brain. Here are some tricks I’ve learned during many a long night as a parent, that really work.
1) Raise the child higher on their side. Kids’ lying on their back makes any drainage from their nose and sinuses tickle the back of their throat. Keeping them on their side can be hard, but you’ll know when they aren’t – you’ll hear coughing.
A baby in a carrier worn by mom/dad/grandma while standing up, or a stroller with baby wedged on their sides at a slight angle could work well for young babies, as long as the baby is not in a slumped forward position, like when they sit in car seats and swings. A firm pillow could work well for toddlers, esp. in a wedge shape and the full width of the bed (so kids can’t get caught between the pillow and the side of the crib/bed). You could also lay them on their side on top of you, while you lie down. (Risks to avoid: Avoid soft pillows and sofas for babies and very young children – there’s a risk of suffocation. And there have been breathing problems and even death caused for newborns (first few months of life) and premmie babies when in car seats and swings in a “slumped forward position,” so limit their use to short travel only, and not for long sleeping periods. Here’s one article by BBC news, and another by SuperNanny.com about that. If you have a baby in bed with you, use bed rails with mesh, and close all gaps between mattress and frames using rolled towels or pool toys (those long floating logs), and pull the bed away from the wall to avoid the child getting wedged between wall and bed. See guidelines for safe co-sleeping (sleeping with baby in your bed). ) Please use good sense, and be aware as possible of the risks to your child. I can’t envision every scenario, and am not a doctor, just a parent like you.
2) Hot steam will greatly reduce bad coughing spells. Even newborns can benefit from breathing easier, as going to sleep at night can be hard if they can’t breathe enough through their nose to nurse or take a bottle (Ask me how I know!). Bring your child into the bathroom, and sit next to the bath tub or shower; you don’t need to get into the shower with them. Run the shower on hot and close the drain. Close the bathroom door too. (Hope you don’t have wallpaper in there!) If you have vapor bath, put it into the bottom of the bathtub at the same time. Parents and kids both benefit from all that steam. Stay 10-20 minutes, and you’ll see that coughs will subside often within 10 minutes. (Drain the tub when you leave.)
Use more steam in your child’s room by using a vaporizer or humidifier. Turn it on well before bed-time to prep the room, keeping the door shut. While sleeping, keep the door to the room almost closed, so the steam stays in that room.
In the kitchen, you can boil water into steam in an open kettle or pot. This also helps to increase the humidity. Because the kettle’s whistle is disabled, I often set a timer for every 15 minutes or so, so I don’t melt the kettle down on the stove. Some stores carry a camphor and menthol additive that can be added to vaporizers, that has the same affect as Vick’s Vapor Rub on the chest. It’s often for sale next to the Vapor Rub.
3) Vapor bath is our next weapon against coughs. It contains menthol, rosemary, and eucalyptus, and it clears out stuffy noses fast. Bathe the child in a warm bath, adding enough vapor bath soap as directed on the label. This is good for mom and dad, too: when showering, close the drain on the tub, and squirt some vapor bath on the shower floor. You’ll breathe better, too. Vapor bath is available at most general pharmacy stores in the baby section.
4) Vick’s Vapor Rub works so well that I sometimes bring it on trips even when my child is well. I finally wised up and bought the large tub for winter. The camphor and menthol are cough suppressants and topical painkillers. It also contains Eucalyptus oil, a cough supressant, as well “inactive” ingredients like cedarleaf oil, nutmeg oil, and turpentine oil.
Just rub a little on their chest and lungs, and use pajamas that fit, but are loose around the neck. (No turtle necks, for instance.) The warming vapors need to be able to rise to their faces. The mixture warms enough on the child’s body. (Note: Never warm this mixture using any method!! It could get too hot, and cause burns.)
There is a plug-in version of vapor rub from Children’s Sudacare called Nightime Vapor Plug. It’s similar to a room air freshener – it has a small brick piece with the medicine that is slid into a wall plug-in unit. The medicine includes menthol, eucalyptus, camphor, mint and rosemary.
Although it does seem to work, I was concerned about leaving something that plugged in and had a small, removable insert (the medicine) at toddler or baby level (and dog, for that matter). It’s fine at night, but one has to remember to remove it in the morning. Second, the company recommends not touching the medicine insert with your skin, which can be tricky. (I read this after I was already holding it, and my skin felt a bit irritated even after washing.) The packets are rather snug, so opening them enough to slide the medicine brick into the base plug-in unit, while not touching them with your skin, is an exercise for those deft of hand.
And I felt like it gave me a slight headache, since I was often in the same room. This would be fine if I had a cough, too, but often parents come down with the same cold a week later (probably from sleep deprivation!)
5) Herbal Cough Medicine: After the last scare with over-the-counter medicine recalls of children’s medicines, I thought we would try herbal cough medicines for the household. (And even our pediatrician was encouraging a more homegrown approach, recommending juices, vitamin C, and lots of garlic for colds (hummus anyone?).
The herbal cough medicines really worked for my daughter and me. The cough medicine I used was Old Indian Wild Cherry Bark Syrup from Plantation Herbals. The former contained honey, herbs like wild cherry bark, horehound leaf, Yerba Santa leaf, mullein, licorice root, and many other herbs, and…oh, yeah- grain alcohol. (25% per volume!) This last ingredient wasn’t for the faint of heart. It made me gasp after taking it. It didn’t affect my thinking, like some cough medicines can (codeine comes to mind). That said, I did take it in the morning after returning home from driving my child to daycare.
This cough medicine said it would be alright for children over 1 year (over 1 year because of the dangers of babies eating honey), but I didn’t feel comfortable giving it to her. It was burning my own throat enough!
Rest at ease that there are children-specific cough medicines have no grain alcohol in them. We used Hyland’s Homeopathic Cough Syrup with Honey (a lot of honey, which goes down easily with kids). It took about 15-20 minutes to see an effect, which can be a long wait when your child is coughing up a lung, but I’ve never timed non-herbal medicines. But after that 20 minutes, they can sleep! And get well! In the meantime, we often fixed the other things that we could – vapor rub on their chest, humidifier, getting them up higher on pillows on their sides, etc.
Stop Wondering About Doses
What I liked with the herbal cough medicine was that I could give her 1-3 Tbsp as needed without worrying about any drug interactions. And I could give her just a little if she was at the end of a cold, or give her a full 3 Tbsp when I thought she needed it, without worrying about when the last dose was given. (This medicine says it is for children over 1 year of age, and honey is again not recommended children under 1 year.)
When using stronger, non-herbal over the counter medications we had to write down when doses were last given, and the minimum wait time until the next dose. (It’s really hard to keep track of dosage times in your head when its the middle of the night, and parents are sleep-deprived from caring for sick loved ones.) So knowing that I didn’t have to worry about hurting her with this cough medicine, nor its interaction with Infant Tylenol, gave me great comfort.
6) Keep the house a little warmer, especially on cold days. I don’t make it balmy, but a little higher than our “we should put on a sweater” energy-saving frame of mind.
7) Running in cold weather aggravates coughs: Toddlers only know two speeds – stop and full run! While its great to get some exercise, especially to wear toddlers down enough to sleep, know that all that “good” exercise can increase her need for oxygen, and during a coughing cold there is phlegm in their lungs. Sometimes my daughter seemed fine at the beginning of an outing, and was coughing a lot after running around outside. Bring them somewhere warm inside to run around instead – a mall, friends house, etc. or find a way to entertain that doesn’t make them breathe hard.
It’s hard being a parent, watching our children suffer again and again with coughs, but I hope these tips will help you hold that cough at bay. And once that’s achieved, your child will be able to rest, which is what they really need to get over a bad cough. Good luck, dear parents.
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An additional note: the main problem with children’s over-the-counter medicines is two-fold: there are either NO instructions for kids under 2, and/or the instructions are based on WEIGHT (and not everyone has a scale available. Babies change every few weeks.) Parents shouldn’t have to guess in the middle or the night, not with such strong medications. Too dangerous.
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Update: we just tried a different herbal one that says its OK for toddlers, but has 25% grain alcohol in it (that makes me cough just thinking about it!!). It’s Planetary Herbals Old Indian Wild Cherry Bark Syrup, found at Whole Foods. It worked immediately, but my daughter hated it in the middle of the night, and we will not be able to ever use it again because of the taste. (The second time I tried to give it to her she spit it out all over her PJ’s, and I can’t say I blame her.) The alcohol burns my throat on the way down (yikes!). I wouldn’t have used it on our daughter, but the dose was 1/2 tsp (which I measured), and we had none of the Hylands one mentioned above in the house, and (of course) it was the middle of the night….(isn’t it always?).
Tired of Women Dying in Movies: Femme Fatale Over Femme “Fatal”!
{ March 25, 2009 @ 6:29 am } · { Life Issues, Politics }
{ Tags: chick flicks, commentary on movies, complaint, femme fatale, femme fatale over femme fatal, Hollywood studio execs, tired of women dying in movies, too many dying scenes, womens film } · { Leave a Comment }
If I see another so-called “women’s film” with someone terminally ill or dying, I’ll scream! What do these producers think:
I like action and adventure, too, romance, and yes – stories about women overcoming odds. But what kind of message does a film send when the strong heroines kill themselves (literally throwing themselves off a cliff! ala Thelma and Louise), or dying? (Shall I really name them all here? Should I? Should I shame the studios publicly? Well, here goes: Steel Magnolias, Step Mom, Beaches, Meryl Steep’s Dancing at Lughnasa (2 people suddenly die at the end in unknown circumstances), Boys on the Side (terminal illness), Marvin’s Room, The Family Stone (horrible, horrible film!), and A Walk to Remember. (I’m sure you can add a few others to the comments below …)
Please! Please, studio execs and writers: Femme Fatale Over Femme “Fatal”! Where are the strong women who get to survive and triumph over their adversity? Or change without having to suffer something terminal in the process?
At least in the films of Frances McDormand or Christina Ricci, and other wonderful actresses, there are wonderful stories that are really different, where I can’t guess the ending, nor do I have to slog through sickness and death scenes. Come on, Hollywood, let’s work on a new story where the heroine fumbles, but has strength, and carries on, instead of going to her grave.