When (if ever) do you take your baby to the doctor for a cold?

[WhoahThere]

Poor dd is 8mo and has the worst cold ever - she seems to be really suffering, and has even partly lost her voice! I suppose there's no point going to the gp with her? She doesn't have a fever but this is day three and it seems to be getting worse....

I took my dd to the doctor after she'd had a cough for about 7 weeks. But I think I'm probably a bit lax about stuff like that.

Take her if she gets a temperature, struggles to feed and if her base of throat or round the neck dip in when she breathes. In the meantime, stick a damp towel on her radiator and raise the head of her bed.

If it seems to be turning into something more than a cold, so breathing problems (night cough as we have asthma in the family) or very sore red-raw throat, or if it's going on too long (couple of weeks), but I've had three - I would probably have worried more about things when I just had DS1!

It sounds pretty normal. They can lose their voices, it's quite cute if they've started talking I'd probably say 3 days if she was under 6 months, but at 8 months more like a week before doctors. (My personal opinion, not medically qualified.) You could always ask your health visitor?

Thanks for that, I know really that there's nothing a doctor will do, just being a bit pfb!

Forgot about the HV actually, won't bother her now but worth remembering in future...

IF I was worried that she wasn't moving all the mucus and it might go to her ears.. really scared of that, moi.

Do you clean her nose out with saline solution?

Not a chance of her holding still to let me do that mamsnet, it seems to streaming out freely though!

Bottom line is that if you have any health concerns at all, ever, go to your GP. Good GPs would rather check baby over and reassure you it's nothing than be called to a baby that ends up really ill because their parent didn't want to bother the doctor.

Poor little mite, colds are rubbish.

A combination of Karvol Vapouriser, humidifier/pan of steaming water in bedroom, Snuffle Baby vapour rub and judicious use of the Dr Bee snotsucker nasal aspirator helped our DD sleep better. Raising the cot on one side was no go because she often turns through 180 degrees in the course of the night.

If you're breast feeding, a squirt of breast milk up the nose is supposed to be better than saline drops for helping to clear things out a bit. I haven't tried it myself, but that's what I've been told.

I've been on a couple of occasion with PFB when my feeling was something was not clearing up, or worse than it had been before. or I just wasn't sure.

Drs were always lovely and said they would much prefer to see a baby early and catch something then let it deteoriate.

I sometimes used was to phone the receptionist, and leave a message describing the symptoms and a GP would then call me back and then decide if I should bring DD in. Soemtimes it was a yes, bring her in today/tomorrow, sometimes it was just a case of being told to only bring her in if x happenned.

Hope this helps

Katy

I'd go to the GP if you're worried. We've done that with DD when she's had noisy breathing (at one point she sounded really bad and we called the OOH GP at midnight!). They are really good with babies and would definitely rather reassure a parent than have a mad dash to A&E with a really poorly baby.

Snot sucker is a good investment and we have a calpol plug-in. Expensive to buy the refills but it is really good - other brands are around too. DD is now old enough for olbus oil and vicks vaporub which is also really good.

You could run the shower and sit with DC in the bathroom in the steam. That can help too (but only if you fancy entertaining them while shut in the bathroom!!)

I've gone if DS's breathing sounds odd or he has a fever for any length of time or he's lethargic.

The last couple of time his cold has moved to his chest and he's been given an inhaler to clear it out.