- Put a pillow under your child's mattress at the head-end of the mattress to lift that side. This way the head is elevated and mucous runs down.
- If the child has congestion for two weeks, ask the doctor if it might be sinus infection.
- tea, juice, water, fluids
- Put a humidifier in the child's room but be careful to clean it regularly so that no bacteria is growing in the humidifier to cause sinus infection.
- If you can convince your child to take a shower or hold them in the shower that's a great way to clear the mucous.
- soup! Our kids love ramen soup and miso soup.
When a child has any kind of stomach bug there are a few rules of thumb:
- don't give them anything to eat for one hour after vomiting. If the stomach is super sensitive and you keep giving food and drink it can create more vomit and lead to dangerous dehydration.
- feed them bland foods. Use BRAT diet (Bananas Rice AppleSauce and Toast). We also give yogurt, as some studies have shown the the probiotics in the yogurt reduce the duration of the stomach sickness.
- Lots of fluids. My kids don't love tea and juice. They say that they want it, but then they don't actually drink it. We have found that popsicles and jell-o are more reliable ways to get fluids into our kids. We have popsicle molds and we use them all the time with some organic no-sugar juice.
Flu and Fever (children 3 and over)
Oliver had a bad flu when he was 4. We learned a lot from our pediatrician as well as an aunt who is a doctor. Here's the main things:
- that the primary concern with fever is dehydration. Keep the child hydrated with fluids including Popsicles and jell-o
- Each dose of advil or tylenol will reduce the fever by about 2 degrees. So if you fever is 105 you might assume you'll need both medications.
- If you can avoid Tylenol, we always opt for Advil when we don't need both.
- If you need both, stagger the medications so that you deliver them at offset schedules. Write down times and doses, it's a lot to remember.
- Sometimes fever goes up after the medicine is administered. The best way to check if the medicine is working is to measure one hour after meds.
- Different ways of taking a temperature are more and less effective. Here's a breakdown:
- Anal thermomater is most accurate.
- Oral thermomater is next.
- under the armpit with a thermomater is next
- ear thermomater (the tool made for going on the baby's ear)
- forehead thermomaters are popular but least reliable.
These excerpts are from NY Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/well/live/flu-h3n2-virus-care-remedy.html
Vulnerable patients with weakened immune systems should consult their doctors, as should anyone who begins to have trouble breathing or feels faint. But for otherwise healthy individuals, the best strategy is to understand how flu affects your body, and practice self-care accordingly.
Flu is spread predominantly by droplets in the air. So if you are within 3 to 6 feet of someone who is infected, you are likely to breathe in their germy exhalations. The virus will then latch onto the mucous membranes that line the back of your nose, your throat and your bronchial tubes. Next, the invaders hijack the epithelial cells that make up the mucous membranes, taking over their metabolic machinery, to replicate and make even more virus, which infects adjacent cells.
This initial phase takes one to four days. “The more you inhale, the shorter the incubation period,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville. “In the beginning, you don’t feel sick. You don’t even know it’s there.”
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Hazel gets group often.
When your child gets croup you have to just accept that no one is going to sleep for the night, and most likely the child won't sleep for about four days since the steroids will make sleep very difficult.
Sometimes at the ER they want to do an x-ray to see if there might be some object lodged in the baby's throat.