Viral wheeze?

[buckyou]

I have a 2yo and the last 2 bad colds she has had I don't feel have been normal. She has another one now and I worry it will go the same way.

She is sick in the day but how you would expect a child to be unwell with a cough or cold. But at night she seems to wake with this terrible wheezing where she is panicking and is struggling to breath, but then it will pass and she is peaceful, but this happens several times in the night.

We took her to the walk in centre in the middle of the night the first time which was last winter, then to the GP last time a few weeks ago. Nothing on her chest. When she's awake it doesn't seem so bad but it goes beyond what I'd feel is normal and IF it carried on you'd call 999 but it only tends to last a few minutes.

I read about a viral wheeze young kids can get? I don't want to be a paranoid parent but does this sound normal? She's totally fine and healthy otherwise.

My son gets this, he was struggling for breath a few times, and he was admitted to hospital a couple of times. We bought a pulse oximeter from Amazon, can be hard to use on little fingers but means if we are worried we know what percentage oxygen saturation he has.
We also give him daily piriton on the advice of paed consultant and he has inhalers for if it's bad.
Our younger son is showing signs of same thing so although not diagnosed we give him the piriton too. I've not used the inhaler as hasn't been prescribed for him but I would in an emergency rather than take to hospital if I could avoid it. Best of luck!

It sounds like viral wheeze (DS had it, has it). Now 13yo & I am trying to get him diagnosed with intermittant asthma.

Hmmm... maybe we could try the antihistamine.

My son has this too.
I’m asthmatic, and its reminds me of my childhood of wheezing.

He’s had two overnight stays in hospital (18m and 4yrs), but responds fairly quickly to steroids and nebulisers. Do you know about the four hour test? If I can keep the wheeze at bay for four hours after using a ventolin, then I won’t seek emergency care. The other week, it was barely two hours before he was struggling again, so we went to A&E and he was admitted.

I’m interested in the piriton thing - what’s the reasoning behind it? Does it help?

The reasoning I was given was that it's more like an allergic response rather than 'proper' asthma as he's totally fine running around, never gets wheezy like that. We thought it was catching a cold that gave him this wheeze, seems now that it was having the wheezing allergy type thing gave him the appearance of cold symptoms - running nose etc. We thought it was worth a try and it's made a huge difference, barely needed inhaler in the last year. At 6 he has 5ml twice a day. Our 2 yr old has 2.5ml twice a day if we remember!

This is interesting - I’ll ask about it at our outpatient appointment next month.

My dad has had this since he had a chest infection at the beginning of the year. He was also wheezing after exercise. A brown inhaler twice a day has made him better.

ds not dad

My youngest has an inhaler he uses because he wheezes every time he has a cold

Do you have an inhaler - ds had one when he got viral wheeze (any cold did it) and he would have up to 10 puffs every two hours for a day or two and go back to nothing

At 5 he is just about outgrowing it