Bad cold in 4 week old

[megonthemoon]

DD is 4 weeks old and has caught her first cold (the joys of having an older nursery-going brother). She is incredibly snuffly and snorty but is managing to feed pretty well, is napping a lot but alert and happy when awake and pooing/weeing as normal. So I'm not unduly worried about her. But I'm just wondering if there is anything I can do to make sleeping, particularly at night, more comfortable for her as she wakes up regularly very bunged up and gets quite distressed :(.

Saline drops aren't working for her, and just upset her, and the Karvol and Olbas Oil I have are both not recommended for such small babies.

Any ideas?

Can you prop her up a little, put something under her mattress to angle it up? Do you have a humidifier? You can put Karvol on a muslin and hang it near her cot the humidifier will help circulate the smell without it being too close to her / unsafe.

You can sit with her in the bathroom and run a steamy hot bath or shower - equally good if no humidifier to hand.

Hope she feels better v soon.

If you have an electric steam sterilizer or a food steamer you can use that to create steam - plug in and switch on without the lid.

But be careful not to burn anyone with a sterilizer's steam...it gets extremely HOT!

thanks all - much better night last night! karvol on muslin seemed to help :)

that's good.

Glad to hear your poor little DD is a bit better. The only other possibility is to go to the GP and ask for a prescription for calpol. When DS2 had a bad cold at 3 weeks old, and we (and he!) were desperate, a low, medically supervised dose of calpol really helped.