This post is about our child, her cough, and the advice we got from a doctor. You must seek medical advice for your own situation.

Our daughter has a cough. An irritating (to us as well as her!) cough that won’t stop. It tickles her throat and hurts her ribs from where she has coughed so hard. She’s at school which, as we all know, is just a petri dish of disease where they breed germs and then share them.

She’s coughing so hard that she quite often makes herself sick. Which if she’s had milk before bed, as she often does, means a nasty wake up call in the middle of the night.

She seems to be producing a lot of phlegm (a wonderful word to type), and dribble, saliva,, all alongside a runny nose. Now I’m (clearly) no medical expert, so I took her to the doctor’s to see what to do?

To my surprise, he said that she had a dry cough… Dry? With that amount of saliva?

Apparently so. The cough is dry, the saliva is just caught up on the cough’s way out of the mouth.

So the advice we got was to carry on with the Calpol and Nurofen for Children, and to try and humidify her room. So wet towels on the radiator and a bowl of steaming water in the room before she goes to bed (no hot water in the room once she’s in there for safety). Keep the door almost shut so the steam and humid air doesn’t come out and the wetter air should stop any further damage to the throat.

We also raised up one end of her bed with a couple of encyclopaedias (showing my age by having them in hardback!). This helped her the runny nose clear.

Hopefully in the morning she will feel a bit better, if only because she’s had a good night’s sleep. Let’s hope so… I could do with one too!

photo credit: SCA Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget