Baby still congested at night 6 weeks after cold

[Mazarati]

Hi there,

My 4 month old has never been a good sleeper. But now we're well into the sleep regression he's awake every hour and will mainly want to sleep on the nipple for comfort. Which means not much sleep for me. To add to things, my lovely partner bought home a heavy cold and passed it on to our 4 month old 6 weeks ago. He got over the actual cold after about 10 days, but he has been badly congested every night for about 6 weeks now. It's waking him even more and makes him very irritable. It's showing no signs of clearing. We've tried saline sprays, snot sucker occasionally, humidifier with eucalyptus, Olbus oil on a tissues to inhale etc etc. Nothing works. Sometimes one or a combination give a temporary fix of an hour or two. We took him to docs a couple of weeks ago and they said just wait for it to clear as he has no fever and is still feeding ok.

But honestly, after this long, I'm not only concerned for him now, I'm concerned for my extreme sleep deprivation. Averaging about 2-3 hours of broken sleep per night. Even before the regression and congestion I wasn't getting much more than this - maybe about 5 hours a night. I really don't know what to do or where this will end. I'm utterly exhausted and in quite a state. Any advice would be much appreciated!

Thanks

That's tough OP, sleep deprivation is the worst.
I'm wondering if it could be an allergy seeing as it's just at night. Perhaps hay fever or dust mite allergy? Do you have any pets? Might be worth returning to the GP to rule out anything like that.

Thanks @burblife it's definitely worth getting that checked. I always figured that because it followed straight on from the cold that that was what caused it. But could be just a coincidence. Both mum and dad have allergies of various sorts so makes sense, though I hope for his sake it's not, especially at his age as I doubt there's much effective medication he could safely take for it 😬

Ours is the same OP. Recently started creche and has been coughing at night for 8 weeks now... nothing really works though. Although a friend suggested chopping onions and leaving in the room! Will try tonight

@MrsXyzAbc I'm willing to try anything so an onion is going by the bed tonight!