12 months of coughs - send help!!

[PrettyinPink23]

My child (3 years old), is onto her 12th cough in the last 12 months. Every time she has a cold or a sniffle, she develops a cough – it is manageable during the day, but at night it becomes so persistent and she will literally cough all night long. The last one lasted more than 4 weeks and resulted in a short course or steroids to help to shift it (second course of steroids this year), and she’s had multiple courses of anti-biotics as the coughs sometime end up developing into a chest infection.

We have been to the Dr several times and they have said they suspect she has childhood asthma and prescribed a preventative inhaler to try for 3 months along with a blue reliever inhaler. Since having the preventative inhaler, she is already onto the second cough and I don’t feel that the inhaler is actually doing anything to help with the cough.
We have tried so many things over the last two years:

Humidifier
Windows Open and cold air in
Saline nasal spray
Raised bed / extra pillow
Manuka honey
Vicks (chest / back / feet)
Olbas Oil / Klearvol
Calpol Plug in
Bronchostop Jnr
Glycerol cough medicine

Nothing seems to help give her relief, poor thing ends up getting upset and distressed and I can't seem to help to fix it. I am at a complete loss and fed up of all the broken night sleep that she (and I) are getting. It feels like we just get over one cough and then the next cough starts! 😪

I guess just looking for some advice if anyone else has experienced similar who can maybe offer any advice 😊xxx

Poor thing, this was my daughter for the longest time! Have you tried Sterimar? That did seem to help - a spray up each nostril about 10 minutes before getting into bed. I found it much better than the other nasal sprays. I also changed bedding regularly and hoovered her entire bedroom and mattress, and also removed all soft toys from the bed that could harbour dust. Hope she feels better soon x

This was my son up until he was prescribed a steroid inhaler in the summer for asthma. They also said to give the salbutamol inhaler before the steroid inhaler to open up the airways first when he’s struggling with coughing.
I know you’ve said you’ve tried Vicks but this really helped after we got his inhaler regime sorted. We also try to reduce his dairy intake when he’s got a cough because it seems to irritate his throat more.
I hope she’s feeling better soon.

Your post brings back such stressful memories of my son being exactly the same at that age. So you have my full empathy. The minute his eyes would close he would cough non stop all night and we're both light sleepers so he would be waking himself and me. The sleep deprivation was soul destroying. We also like you tried what felt like hundreds of solutions.

We were told viral induced asthma, we used the preventative inhaler which helped a little in combination with the humidifier on at the same time as the calpol plug in and two pillows under the head. It doesn't STOP the cough but it reduced it enough for us to get some resemblance of sleep.

Is she unwell with the cough, runny nose, temp etc or is it just a cough on its own?

No advice sorry but DD is the same age and we're struggling with this too, she got diagnosed with a "viral wheeze" a year ago and was given a blue inhaler which up until the weather changes does seem to help, now it's colder though it only seems to help for a short while then she's back to coughing all night. I'm going to speak to the doctor tomorrow to see if a steroid inhaler might help.