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You know that feeling when you see your toddler miserable but you cannot do anything about it?
Caitlin has had a bout of colds lately. In only a span of the last 3-4 weeks, she’s come down with a cold twice.
Whatever the source of the colds, both times have seen her with blocked nose.
During sleeps, both daytime naps & overnight, she has woken crying declaring refusal to some incomprehensible muttering. I can only attribute this to lousy dreams (ie, not very bad dreams, just what seems like pain-in-the-A dreams) due to her discomfort in breathing. Comforting her back to sleep, I can hear she’s either breathing through her semi-blocked nose (with fluttering muck inside) or actually breathing through her mouth, drying her lips.
We do administer the medication to relief this. But as with all medication it takes some time before they kick in. Perhaps it is already working as one of them is an anti-histamine- otherwise she’d be drooling all over her pillow, and I don’t mean from her mouth.
But it is so frustrating to see her miserable like this, when it isn’t any fault of hers, and that she is trying to get back to sleep too as opposed to just being mischievous & refusing to sleep. I try my best to comfort her & coax her back to sleep, getting her to have at least a sip of water in between; which she sometimes refuses.
I can just hear my mum saying “Now you know what it’s like to be a [I did all this for you too] parent”…
Poor baby. And poor Mummee and Daddee too.
My boys seems to sleep quite well while having flu/cold, but occasionally will wake up crying. Then I do one or a few of the following:
Hold them up against me and pat them or give a back rub;
Prop them up on an adult pillow to help ease breathing when they have fallen asleep, before they wake up complaining;
Give them something to suck on, Micah - bottle, Max - Mommy, to help comfort them;
If I can get them to be calm enough, give a doze of the flu medication.
Get well soon, Caitlin.
Thanks Moomykin!
Glad to share that she seems well already this morning. Hopefully well enough by the weekend and I can start bringing her swimming again.
Your advice on propping them up elevated is something I should have thought of / tried. She does seem to only complain about blocked nose when she is in bed (and by nature she doesn’t complain much)
Glad everything is looking up!!
Flu running around coz of the rain!!
Little Miss actually now tells us that she want’s medo (medicine) to help make her feel better. The problem we have these days is trying to convince her she just can’t keep taking it all the time when she is unwell. It’s the joy of having toddlers that they get these runs of illnesses, and as parents it can be just as hard because all we want to do is make them better instantly to protect them - but sometimes we just can’t solve all the problems.