Humidifier/coughing/snuffly children advice needed please!!!

[daisythemilkingcow]

Hi, hope someone can help - here goes.....

DD2 is almost 6 months and has been very congested/snuffly pretty much since she was born. Affects her sleep terribly as she wakes from blocked nose and gets in a tizzy and then is awake for ages. She rarely sleeps for more than 2 hours at time but often less. Feeding is affected sometimes but not all.

Have tried the following:
Raising cot mattress - she hates it and wriggles to the side of the cot and gets stuck in the bars!
Plug in smelly vapour thing - smelt really bad and didn't seem to help much
Olbas oil - I use at every feed and when she goes to sleep, seems to help clear nose
Snufflebabe - on chest/back and feet, not sure if it helps or not, doesn't seem to make any difference if I don't do it!
Humidifier - We bought a warm air one which seemed to help a bit but was very noisy and stopped working so I took it back.

We went and stayed with a friend at the weekend and DD1 slept for 5 hours!! my friends room was warmer which i thought would make it worse and her humidifier was an almost silent cold mist one in the shape of a frog (have looked on the net and can only get them in the states i think - she got hers from a bankrupt stock sale shop which is now shut down!) I went and got a cool air vicks one in exchange for my old one but this just spits out freezing cold air (no mist) which makes our room even colder and is also pretty noisy, so much so that i switched it off last night and boiled the kettle instead because she was even more blocked up than usual!

Does anyone know where to get the Crane frog humidifier or can anyone explain diff between effects of warm/cool air ones or recommend a really quiet model of either?

Also DD1 4yrs with cough that doctor can't do anything about but she now looks like she's choking everytime she coughs and cries because she wants her cough to go away - since reading some of the other threads thinking humidifier may help her too?? Again not sure whether warm/cool air best

Any help will be much appreciated, am really starting to lose the plot now from cumulative sleep deprivation

Do you know what I'm thinking - hit me as soon as I read your post. It sounds like an allergy to me. Do you have pets?

thanks Picante - we don't have pets but i've been thinking dust or central heating makes it worse. I've put a cover on the mattress and cleaned room thoroughly. we have wooden floors and natural non dust harbouring bedding already so my only thought to help was the humidity being improved

have you looked on ebay for one? I've got a good one this one in fact.

It's a bit noisy but keeps the room warm.

Also have you tried a children's version of vicks?

ebay is a good idea, i'll have a look. I have snufflebabe which i think is similar to vicks. I'm going to get vicks later though as it's from 6 months so ok to use now!