Womb to Bloom - Maternity & Beyond

When you have an otherwise healthy infant, there is not much that is more frustrating than that infant’s first cold. We all do our best to keep those common cold germs away from our newborns. We stay away from crowds. We wash and sanitize our hands obsessively. But it always happens anyway. That first stuffy nose. The first runny green snots. Sometimes even a little cough heard over the monitor. If you’re like most first time mothers, you’ll probably freak out a little bit.

Now let me preface all of this with a disclosure. I am not a doctor or a nurse or a medical professional of any sort. My advice is solely based on being a mom and having extensive experience in snot-wiping. I’m really, really good at it. If you are concerned that your child’s condition is more serious than a common cold, please call your pediatrician.

You should definitely call the doctor if your baby is less than three months old, has a history of ear infections, has a fever higher than 100 degrees, is vomiting and/or has diarrhea, won't wake up, has a cough which has grown steadily worse or is wheezing.

In the absence of these symptoms, it’s probably just a cold. I can tell you that nothing is more infuriating than waiting for 45 minutes in the “sick” waiting room at the doctor’s office with your fussy baby only to be told that your infant has an upper respiratory infection (doctor-speak for a cold) and that there is no medication that can be given to alleviate the symptoms.

The Food and Drug Administration recently issued a public health advisory questioning the safety of children’s cold medicines, especially for children under two. Most infant cold medicines have now been taken off the market. The voluntary withdrawal did not include cold medicines for children over two, although there is apparently some concern that they could cause health risks to kids up to age six. Even before the withdrawal, I recall pediatricians telling me that cold meds were basically ineffective in newborns anyway.

So, what do you do? You’ve got a crabby baby, who is probably not sleeping or eating very well. If he or she has been sleeping through the night, you might experience a regression and a few more sleep-deprived nights. The doctors’ tips for dealing with baby colds are all homeopathic. Run a humidifier in the nursery while baby sleeps. Most books recommend a cool mist humidifier but I always got better results with a warm mist humidifier. You have to be very careful about where you place the humidifier so that the warm mist isn’t directed straight at the crib. And remove it from the room entirely when baby is not in her crib. That mist is hot and could hurt a little hand or face. I always use the menthol-eucalyptus oil with the warm mist humidifier. It just feels like it clears the nasal passages when you walk into the room.

Other treatments for baby’s cough and runny nose include saline nasal drops, followed by suction with a bulb syringe (a.k.a. the blue-bulbed snot sucker you got at the hospital) in baby’s nose to help clear his nasal passages. By the way, your baby is not going to like this. At all. Not the saline drops and not the suction. Prepare for some screaming.

So, what else helps? Warm baths can help decongest that snotty little nose – especially if you use the baby bath formulated with menthol-eucalyptus vapors. Extra fluids for the baby to drink also helps to keep mucus under control and to help the baby stay hydrated. If there is a fever, you can give the appropriate dose of infant ibuprofen or acetaminophen. (If there is fever, you may want to run your baby in to be checked for an ear infection.)

When my babies were very small, I occasionally propped them up a little bit while sleeping to help keep their little noses from getting too stopped up. There are foam wedges sold at the baby stores that can help with this. I also recall tilting the entire crib mattress every so slightly with blankets underneath. It was easier to do in a cradle as opposed to a crib. I did this only when the babies were very young and not very wiggly or mobile.

Ultimately, time will do its job and the cold will die out. In the meantime, find your softest cloth diapers or burp rags to use to wipe the runny nose (tissues will make her soft skin raw and red in a heartbeat). And start practicing the one of the most instinctual of mothering acts – picking your baby’s nose. Lovely.