Stridor
The symptoms: High-pitched breathing that sounds noisy.
What causes it: When a child is inhaling deeply trying to breathe as airways swell and narrow or there is a blockage in the throat or voice box. A number of conditions can cause stridor, including croup, airway injuries, and allergic reactions.
What to do: Contact your child’s pediatrician. Respiratory distress requires immediate medical attention.
Wet Cough
The symptoms: Mucus in the airways that your child is coughing up.
What causes it: Most are caused by irritation and/or viral infections in the windpipe and in the lung’s larger air passages called bronchi.
What to do: Contact your pediatrician. In a child without asthma, this could be a straightforward cough, but because there could be a lot of potential causes for cough and it could be associated with other symptoms, such as fever, it can be complicated, too. For example, your child might be sick, then feels fine, but then noticeably gets worse again or perhaps develops a fever, it’s possible there could be a bacterial infection on top of a cold, says Dr. Asta. Call your child’s doctor right away if your child is younger than 2 months old and is coughing, or if your child has trouble breathing after blowing her nose and when she is not coughing, or if she starts acting very sick, has trouble eating and sleeping, if the cough appears suddenly with a fever, or if the child has whooping cough symptoms. A cough that lasts more than three weeks should get checked as well, adds Dr. Asta. To help relieve the discomfort of cough, you can give children older than 4 months warm liquids. Providing fluid in general is helpful whether warm or not. Using cool-mist humidifiers can provide relief as well. Don’t give children cough medicine.
