croupy cough - dr or not?

[CeliaChettam]

We are abroad and ds2, aged 3, possibly asthmatic and hospitalised with a pneumococcal infection aged 18 months, has a cold which has turned into a horrible barking croupy cough. No temperature, good appetite, cheerful and bouncy, but I get very anxious about anything possibly involving breathing because of the history. How do I know if/when I need to start working out how to get him to the doctor here, or is the cough in itself OK as long as he's otherwise well and happy? He's coughing in his sleep now.

My ds had a barky croupy type cough once and when I took him to the doc it turned out to be an ear infection.

Thank you both! He seems perfectly well and cheerful (well, did before he went to sleep, now he seems asleep...) His breathing is a bit fast but good colour and no temp - I just know I'm going to change my mind at 3am and decide to get him checked out. But there were none of those scary symptoms ten mins ago so they might laugh at me - ER for a little boy with a cough.

Well child with a cough - don't worry too much.
Unwell child with a cough - get him checked out.

Croup can be really scary but rarely needs hospital treatment.
Pixie's list of worrying symptoms is really good

Here is more information on croup. 'Tis a good site in general, you might also want to look up bronchiolitis.

Hope you and your DS have a good night.

More or less the same, thanks for asking! i.e., seems fine most of the time and then just when I relax I see his shoulders rising as he breathes or catch a bit of a wheeze and start worrying again, and the cough still sounds terrifying. But he spent all afternoon running around like a loon with his brother and ate even more than usual and is, really, fairly obviously fine. Only he was fairly obviously fine until a few hours before we went into hospital last time, and thereafter not fine at all for quite a long time. The laminated list is a good idea. How old is your dd, Pixie? Does the worry ever get less, do you think, or will we be phoning them up and demanding that they breathe at us in twenty years time?

That's actually rather reassuring, that it becomes part of ordinary life and the children can take charge. I'm still not totally convinced ds2 is asthmatic as opposed to generally given to chestiness - until very recently, the inhaler didn't seem to have much effect and it's only been really horrible when he had the pneumoccocal (sp?) infection which was half his life ago. Though he has a fine set of allergic reactions to nothing we or the allergies consultant could identify, including a recent one to bath water... Good luck with the midnight alarms!