Coughing 2-year-old, please reassure me, medical MNers

[madamez]

DS has had his fair share of coughs, colds, tummy bugs etc but is mostly a robust active boy with a good appetite. The last few days he has been coughing a lot in the night, with a real heaving sort of cough. Now I have heard one or two other local kids coughing like this in the street and on buses, so I think that it's probably some virus doing the rounds but... OK I have enough medical knowledge just to be able to frighten myself. Can a kid start asthma or any similar horrors at nearly 3 or would there have been signs earlier?

DS2 was diagnosed with asthma at 2. He woke up every night from October to March coughing, I used to have sit up with him for about an hour. He used to cough everytime he ran.

Anyway point is a year later it had completey gone, no sign at all fine. I now think he had whooping cough. New strain around apparently exactly those symptoms- with no whoop. He hasnt been vaccinated but apparently the new strain isn't protected against by vaccination anyway.

point being could be asthma, but perhaps more likely to be a virus even if it lasts for ages. hay fever???

You know, I have a slight suspicion that it might be whooping cough though he has no fever and has been running around like mad all day today (we went on an outing to a farm/playzone). I had whooping cough at 10 despite having had the vaccination so I know that can happen.

The new strain is completely unaffected by the vaccination anayway. It's like whooping cough, but milder.... Apparently quite a bit of it around....

We all had whooping cough last autumn - and so did most of our town. Going to the cinema was a nightmare. It went away eventually, but it was horrible while it lasted. The only thing that seemed to help as all was sipping iced water. Have a look at this website - it enabled us to diagnose ourselves, and reassured us when our GP was pretty clueless! www.whoopingcough.net/index.htm

my child got asthma at 4 no earlier signs. If u concerned get him checked out.

How does his breathing seem? Does he seem to be getting enough air?

I have had asthma basically all my life and a tell-tale symptom for me is, bizsrrely enough, an itch under my chin down to my throat. Is he touching/scratching there a lot? FWIW, I had a lot of breathlessness etc., but never actually coughed much with my asthma.