The common cold weakens the body. It can be protracted and manifest various symptoms. One of the most unpleasant is a dry cough in a child at night. Every mother should know how to calm an irritated throat and let a baby fall asleep.
Definition
Coughing is a natural reaction of the body. This is a kind of purification, the removal of unnecessary and harmful substances and bacteria from it. The muscles of the respiratory tract immediately respond to the presence of any stimulus and try to get rid of it. Pathogenic microorganisms or irritating allergens are excreted along with mucus, the lungs are cleansed, a person can take a deep breath. That is, it is only a symptom of a certain disease. To know how to calm a cough in a child, you should identify the root cause of its appearance and try to eliminate it as soon as possible.
Kinds
You need to treat the disease itself, but you also want to calm down an unpleasant uncomfortable symptom. In this case, it is important not only to determine its root cause, but also with the type of cough itself. Wet and dry, they are eliminated by various means and require the right approach.
Dry are frequent unproductive coughing. They do not provoke the withdrawal of mucus from the lungs and more and more irritate the baby's throat. Such a cough leads to a worsening of the condition, more and more trauma to the throat, and sometimes it becomes continuous and can cause vomiting. Symptoms also depend on a particular type of disease, for example, with nervous and allergic reactions it often manifests itself superficially, with characteristic small coughs, sometimes it becomes barking or annoyingly exhausting, as with whooping cough. Before you calm a severe cough in a child of this nature, you should consult a doctor and conduct a thorough examination of the trachea and bronchi.
Wet - is determined by the characteristic discharge of sputum. Its sound indicates that a certain amount of viscous fluid (pus or blood) has accumulated in the baby's lungs, which requires an immediate and correct withdrawal. The reproductivity of this process, the constant coughing up of mucus, indicate a qualitative cleansing of the body. Medications help alleviate the situation, with their help there is a complete removal of mucus, and the cough stops.
Causes of night cough
Before a child coughs, you should think about the causes that cause it. At night, the patient’s mucus does not have the ability to exit in the usual way, it accumulates and causes suffocating bouts of severe coughing. The same process occurs in the lungs, when the baby is in a horizontal position at night, their blood supply slows down and sputum dissolves extremely slowly.
A lot of environmental factors can provoke such attacks. Even very dry or too cool indoor air. A dry cough is especially acute in a child at night. An experienced pediatrician knows how to calm a sore throat and ease the process of coughing, which should be addressed at the first manifesting characteristic symptoms, since in some cases a rather serious infection can become the cause of coughing.
First aid
The doctor should be involved in the treatment of the identified disease, but each parent should know how to calm the cough in the child quickly and correctly. Cough receptor suppressants will help relieve a suffocating attack, and a properly selected sputum elimination drug will significantly speed up the healing process.
Dry cough at night causes a lot of inconvenience. He is tiring, exhausting the child and does not allow him to sleep peacefully. Such attacks well eliminate the usual inhalations that our mothers and grandmothers always used in such situations. For these purposes, it is advisable to purchase a special inhaler, it is sold in any pharmacy and must include a certain type of saline solution in its kit. How to calm a coughing fit in a child if the inhaler doesn’t have a floor with his hand? Ask him to just breathe over the steam, it moisturizes the dried throat well and quickly removes the tickle in it.
Key recommendations
Having figured out how to calm a strong cough in a child at night, special attention should be paid to factors surrounding the baby.
- Wet the entire room. This is an important aspect that requires implementation. Wet and clean air promotes high-quality filtration of the lungs, they are less irritated. Be sure to ventilate the room, if possible, install a special humidifier in it, or simply hang towels moistened with water on the batteries.
- Frequent coughing can be a symptom of an allergy. Pay attention to the objects surrounding the child, remove everything that arouses suspicion from the room. Be sure to change the bedding, the laundry detergent can also cause an annoying night cough.
- When deciding how to calm a cough in a child, do not forget about a plentiful drink. It helps to make up for the lack of fluid in the body and lungs, promotes high-quality dilution of sputum and its rapid withdrawal. Food and fluid intake should not be hot, they will increase the sore throat. An ideal option would be warm food and drink, always in large quantities.
Cough medicine
How to calm a strong cough in a child at night, the doctor must decide. Only an experienced specialist is able to correctly identify the root cause and prescribe the appropriate drugs. They are divided into several completely different types, and their incorrect reception can significantly complicate the situation.
Mixtures - often are formulations that include several potent ingredients at once. In a pharmacy, such remedies are offered without a prescription, have a wide spectrum of action, are used immediately as coughing, decongestant. Here it is necessary to take into account the nature of the cough in the baby and be sure to compare it with the effect of the remedy. An allergic dry cough should not be treated with antihistamines or antitussive drugs, which can form a cork in the lungs that interferes with breathing.
Expectorant and mucolytic - usually the doctor prescribes both of these drugs, thereby enhancing the overall effect of the drug. These funds perfectly thin the mucus and contribute to its rapid excretion from the lungs.
Antitussive - it is better to use it exclusively as prescribed by the doctor, they are able to completely eliminate the reflex located in the brain and responsible for the reproduction of cough. But with a large accumulation of fluid in the lungs, their intake is strictly contraindicated.
Massage
Before you calm a cough in a child at night with various medications, try a massage. Usually it brings significant relief, contributes to an improved withdrawal of sputum, the baby will be able to clearing throat and sleep well. This type of massage is characterized by soft stroking, kneading movements in the chest and back (between the shoulder blades). To strengthen ego effectiveness, various plant-based essential oils and ointments will help. Before using them, be sure to conduct a test for the sensitivity of the baby to this type of substance.
Folk methods
Our grandmothers knew how to calm a dry cough in a child, and with great success in these cases they used natural home remedies. Honey is especially good in this case, it is filled with vitamins and minerals useful to the baby’s weakened body, and children will take sweet tasty syrup based on it with pleasure.
- A very useful warm drink that can be consumed all day and must be drunk before bedtime. Mix a spoonful of honey and a little lemon juice in a cup of warm boiled water. The content of vitamin C in such a healing drink will go through the roof, it perfectly soothes the exhausted throat and significantly softens bouts of dry cough. It is important to ensure that you are not allergic to these products!
- If the baby is not against warm milk, you can prepare another, no less effective mixture with it. Warm it up to a temperature of 50-60 degrees, add soda on the tip of the knife and a good spoon of natural honey. From time immemorial, such a drink quickly eliminated even the most painful and dry cough in a child at night.
How to calm the cough with folk methods should be known to all parents. They will bring more benefits than pharmacy options, as they do not contain artificial flavors, preservatives or other components that are not useful to the body.
Bedtime treatments
In order not to decide how to calm the night cough in a child, try to prevent the occurrence of this situation by carrying out a number of preventive measures:
- you can apply warm paraffin to the chest area for half an hour;
- it is necessary to warm the bronchial area well;
- do not give the child in the evening hours annoying foods;
- to cover the baby with a warm blanket.
If there is no temperature, you can make a warm foot bath and put on cotton socks.
It's important to know
The presence of an inflammatory process in the body requires an immediate visit to a specialist, in this case, the obvious signals will be:
- high temperature that cannot be brought down for a long time;
- wheezing and noise that are clearly audible when breathing;
- blood impurities in mucus discharged with cough;
- blue nasolabial triangle or bouts of vomiting.