Ds, who is six weeks old, has had a cough and cold for four weeks now - it's soooooooo frustrating

[emkana]

He had one lot of antibiotics once, because of chest infection, but then they decided his chest was actually clear. Whenever I think he's just getting better he suddenly gets worse again.
He's feeding well and smiling and has a good colour, so he's not poorly as such, but just sniffly all the time and the cough is terrible at times. Don't know what to do.

It doesn't help that his sisters have runny noses all the time.

ds was sniffly, it started at two weeks and just seemed to go but it went on for weeks (till 8 weeks i think).GP said some babies are just like that.
I found that tilting his cot so that his head was raised helped.
Dont know if thats any help

It helps to hear that other babies are like this.

Is he throwing up after the coughing at all?

He used to for a while, but it has stopped now.
Why, what would that mean?

Ds was very sniffly for the first few weeks. Have you tried putting bm up his nose - it really does seem to help clear up runny noses

I've tried it once, should try again really.
I just use saline drops and one of those sucker thingies to clear out his nose.
The difficulty is to know whehter it's on his chest or not.

I'm just thinking of my DS who had what turned out to be whooping cough starting at two weeks old. It took ages to get it diagnosed because he had a clear chest (which you typically do, with whooping cough, unless complications have set in) and wouldn't have a really bad coughing fit in front of the doctors so they tended to metaphorically pat me on the head and tell me to run along and not worry. He tended to throw up several times a day after a coughing fit, though, which in retrospect is one of the things they should have picked up on because that's typical of whooping cough in infants. It's an outside shot, but I'd be inclined to ask the doctors if they can definitely rule out whooping cough. The trouble is that the only definite test for it is a culture from swabs which is (a) pretty uncomfortable for the poor mite when they take them and (b) a long time arriving at an answer.

Where did he catch it?
Was he okay?

Well, he caught it from me because I went down with it a week beforehand. I must have been exposed a few days before going into labour (it starts off just like a cold/mild cough, so people wander around infecting other people before knowing what they've got) as mine started to develop when he was a few days old. He was fine in the end -- spent a few days in hospital on supplementary oxygen and various monitors, didn't put on any weight at all for over a month, and had a really bad cough for about 5 months, but fortunately didn't develop any of the complications.

I can't believe Sebastian is 6 weeks old already

I know, it goes so quick.

Sat here worrying now whether he might have whooping cough! He's not vomiting though, so hopefully that's a good sign.