9 month old coughs a lot

[zebra]

In winter DD had near constant colds... but now it's summer and she still has these little coughing spells. Not necessarily every day, and usually for less than a minute. But when she coughs it's often hard enough to sick up some milk or other food -- usually she coughs most just after she's had a big meal or feed off of me. Can having a full tummy make them cough harder? She coughs more when she's just gone to sleep.

People comment on her couth, and my first didn't do this.

Our local GPs are very asthma happy they diagnosed DH as having asthma last year it turned out to be pnuemonia and went away when MIL dragged him off to see her GP in another part of the country and he was put on 3 lots of antibiotics.

So I'm reluctant to take DD to see a doc. I would hate putting her on steroids unless it was undeniably necessary. She seems very happy & hearty in herself, otherwise.

What do you all think?-j

my advice would be to see a homeopath. my son seemed to have a permanent cough from a few months old. at six months o saw a homeopath about it and she put it down partly to having an older sibling who passes on lots of germs but also in part on the DPT vaccine - she gave him a homeopathic remedy to the vaccine which does not compromise the immunity and at eight months now he hardly ever coughs....
if you do go for a homeopath try to get one on recomendation.

My ds had a constant cough, coughed at night, was sick when he coughed etc and my surgery got him an appointment with a hospital chest clinic. But after another month or so he suddenly just got better (I did start giving him vitamin drops), he stopped getting colds and I cancelled his hospital appointments. I can't really offer an advice but my son did cough a lot, and he just got better on his own.

Zebra - you don't say how old your daughter is, but GPs shouldn't diagnose asthma in children under the age of 2. I work in a related field, and it doesn't sound to me as if this is asthma, but it would be worth checking to see if she has a chest infection. Only thing is, if your GP missed pneumonia, is he/she going to pick up bronchitis? May be worth a trip to see your MIL!

Both my sons were misdiagnosed asthma by the GPs when they were under and just over 1 respectively because of long standing coughs. The only question the GPs seemed to ask was "is there a history of asthma in the family?" - the fact that I am asthmatic seemed to seal it and both were put on the same dose of salbutamol & becotide that I'm on!!!!!!!!!!!! We chose not to administer these doses and with our eldest son it just seemed to clear up over the summer and did not return and with the younger we went to see an osteopath who helped tremendously with exercises, diet and good old fashioned sensible advice. Again, it cleared up and has not returned. Hope this helps.

My son went through a phase of coughing (around 15 mo.) and noisy breathing particularly at night. It started with a cold and didn't go away when the cold did. It lasted a few months and then got better on its own. During the time that he had it I was in the States and took him for a check up to his paediatrician there. She said that he didn't have asthma (has diagnosed asthma in one of my cousin's children, so she is familiar with it) and said that it would probably just go on its own. She said that he had large tonsils which might be what was causing the noisy breathing. Zebra, your dd is probably throwing up on a full stomach because of the coughing. The cough triggers a vomit reflex which is more likely to bring up food if there is lots there to come up...I am speaking from my own current pregnant experiences.

sorry, should have said, DD is almost 9 months old.
She has an almost constant runny nose... Her toddler brother brings home every germ going. Someone else suggested post nasal drip. What is "post nasal drip", anyway?

I believe it means that sensation that mucus is dripping down your throat and accumulating at the back of your throat all the time that you sometimes get after a cold. I get it sometimes and I'm pretty sure it's what triggered the vomiting in my son when he was smaller. It wasn't nice but he did get better when he got through his one-cold-after-another stage. Hope your little girl is feeling better soon.

My daughter is 3 and since she was about 1 we've had really bad coughs every winter. It got to the stage where I was reluctant to give her anything to eat and especially milk as everything just came back out again. She's usually fine in the summer. Our docter was reluctant to put it down to asthma and sent us to see a chest specialist. She had a 'broncoscopy' which is kind of like a combined 'hoover' and camera. It goes down her throat and they look for anything unusual, and also gave her a 'hoover out'. They found some particularly persistent bugs and she was given a 2 week course of anti-biotics and she was great until the following winter when it was just as bad. They've finally done some blood tests and discovered that she is low on some antibodies which we manufacture ourselves and this leaves her more open to catching bad coughs. They hope that she will have developed more of these antibodies by the time she's about 5 and will give her a blood test once a year to check. It means she'll still get the coughs but it makes it more easy to cope knowing why.

zebra, my dd had a similar thing at about this age and the gp thought she had asthma (since dh had it severely as a child), so referred us to a paediatrician, who gave us the advice to try a nebuliser (which we bought, silly us) and some medicine or other in it (it was over 4 yrs ago, can't remember what it was called). Turned out she had "a post-viral cough", which can happen after a run of colds etc. I think that could be the case with your dd? Hope she gets better soon! Sorry, in a huge rush!