Often, you ignore the cough your child suffers, thinking it’s a common cold. Unfortunately, a cough could be a symptom of significant health conditions in your kid that require immediate medical attention.
As per the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on average, your baby gets six to ten colds a year, which impacts the bronchus causing bronchial issues.
The potential causes of most coughs are respiratory conditions like a cold, asthma, or influenza. There are serious ones like whooping cough or Pneumonia.
Having some knowledge of multiple types of coughs your toddlers and children can face is important. Whenever you find any of the symptoms given below, run a location-specific search like the cough specialist near me and visit the doctor without experimenting with the disease by yourself.
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Barking Cough
Often when your baby goes to bed with a stuffy nose, you may hear a sound like a barking seal.
Croup is a kind of viral illness that causes inflammation in the larynx and the trachea, which causes a barking cough in kids. These are most common between October and March and affect kids ages 6 months to 3 years. The croup cough worsens at night. Your baby can make a high-pitched whistling sound during inhalation.
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Phlegmy Cough
Your baby’s cough sounds mucousy, with a sore throat, watery eyes, runny nose, and a poor appetite.
A common cold may cause coughs in babies, kids, and toddlers. Usually, it lasts for one to two weeks and becomes more cumbersome in the first few days.
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Nighttime Dry Cough in Kids
During winter, your child suffers from an annoying cough that gets worse every night.
Asthma can trigger dry cough in kids. The airways become narrowed and inflamed when they produce excess mucus in chronic conditions. The mucus in the lungs creates a little trickle. Cold air, exercise, and allergies trigger such coughs.
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Miserable Cough
When your baby has got a weak, hoarse cough, high fever, sniffles, and muscle aches, you find the little one too wiped out to play.
Influenza or flu is a viral illness that attacks the respiratory system and causes coughs in kids. Usually, the flu has a long incubation period in children who walk around with the virus for days before they get sick and share it with friends and family. This cough spreads through little droplets.
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Raspy, wheezy cough
The bronchioles are the tiniest airways in the lungs. It’s problematic for a child to breathe when they swell and fill with mucus. The most common cause is the RSV or respiratory syncytial virus.
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Whooping Cough
In this case, your baby suffers from a cold for more than a week and coughs more than 20 times in one breath. She has trouble breathing and makes a whooping sound while she inhales.
This kind of cough sound is likely caused by pertussis or whooping cough. Bacteria attack the lining of the breathing passages, developing severe inflammation which narrows the blocks and the airways. Kids who have not yet been fully immunised are most likely to catch whooping cough.
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Gross, Wet Cough
Cold for a week may get worse. This cough is wet and phlegmy, and breathing seems to be faster than usual.
In Pneumonia, a virus or bacterium invades the lungs causing them to fill up with fluid. Here, your child tries hard to make the fluid out of his lungs.
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Coronavirus Cough
As reported, children and infants may have mild cases of coronavirus (COVID-19). Usually, they remain asymptomatic. Some of them may get cold-like symptoms like runny nose, coughing, and fever.
The coronavirus type of cough is usually dry with no phlegm or mucus. Sometimes, it may get wet and productive. When your child develops symptoms of COVID-19 or complications like multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C), you must seek the advice of an obstetrician. Usually, the symptoms of COVID-19 show up in 2-14 days after exposure.
The suggestions of a cough specialist in treating a kid
Following are the basic precautions you can take to avoid bronchial issues in your children, says the renowned Cough specialist doctor in Manchester.
- Remember the basics like frequent washing of hands, using a mask and tissue, and a cool-mist humidifier in your child’s room.
- Sanitise smartly with a sanitiser that contains at least seventy per cent of alcohol.
- Check fever and have lots of fluids and warm milk with honey. Remaining hydrated pays off.
- Stay energised is crucial to fighting the virus.
- Check for the symptoms of retractions like belly popping in and out, their clavicles poking in and out, or the muscles in between their rib cage are pulling in and out.
- Pick the right cough syrup with the approval of the FDA.
- Stop the snot with saline to clear the nasal passages by loosening the mucus and helping them to breathe a little easier.
- Cuddling helps in monitoring your baby.
- Try to keep it contained so that the cough does not infect multiple kids.
Treatment provided by a cough specialist
Croup Treatment is beneficial. When you find your child wakes up barking, bundling up and going outside helps relax the airways. Turn on the hot shower in the steamy bathroom for 15 to 20 minutes. The warm and moist air helps breathe, says the cough specialist in Manchester.
In case of trouble breathing or stridor, they use saline nose drops and a bulb syringe to help clear the mucus and make your baby less likely to cough. Giving her a warm bath and using a cool-mist humidifier helps. Let your child inhale some vapour and give a light massage on the chest.
During an attack, kids with mild cases can take inhaled bronchodilator medication, while children with moderate-to-severe asthma require daily preventive medicine.
Whooping cough demands hospitalisation with proper dosing of antibiotics, ibuprofen or acetaminophen.
The bottom line
Often, your baby suffers from a cold and cough. As a parent, you must have the basic reasons and preventive measures to comfort your child. The Cough specialist in Manchester provides quality pediatric care to kids of all ages.
