How to Treat a Runny Nose in an Infant

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Dr. David Hill and today we're going to talk about treating a runny nose in an infant. Now infants almost always get runny noses as a result of a cold although gastroesophageal reflux may cause congestion and a runny nose as well. Older infants greater than six months of age may also have allergies, so how we treat a runny nose depends in part on what the cause of the runny nose is. Assuming it's a cold there's not a whole lot to do. The real thing to be concerned about is the congestion. When infants eat, especially if they are nursing, they have to breath through their nose while they are eating. So, an infant whose nose is clogged up may have a very difficult time eating, and of course, sleeping. The thing to do for this is to use saline drops. Now you can go buy a product like Little Noses, a commercially available saline drop for very little money, or if it's the middle of the night and you don't want to go out to a drug store you can make your own saline drops. To do that you take a half a teaspoon of salt in a cup of water, go ahead and boil that to make it nice and clean and make sure the salt is all dissolved, and then let it cool back down to room temperature, at least to body temperature. You can then take a medicine dropper or eye dropper and drop just two or three little drops of salt in the baby's nose, let them sit there for a few seconds and then hopefully you still have that little suction bulb thingy that they gave you when your baby was born. Usually they are light blue or dark red in color they came home from the hospital usually but you can buy them at a drug store for a couple of dollars if you don't still have it and you can suck out the baby's nose using that bulb suction. Here's the key, the holes of the nose goes straight back. They don't go up so when you are sucking out the nose don't suck up, suck straight back. You don't have to jam that thing way down into the baby's face you just get it right here at the opening of the nose, that's plenty and you can suck out some of the snot and some of the saltwater that you've made and that will clear up the baby's nose and usually help with eating and sleeping. Now this can be overdone. First of all it makes babies mad. You'll notice he or she is probably going to cry vigorously when you do this. Second of all if you jam a suction bulb in the nose a lot you may make matters worse by causing more swelling so I'd be pretty cautious with this, do it just before feeds and before nap time or sleep time for the baby. Other than that you might run a humidifier in the room so that the mucous secretions remain moist and mobile and don't dry up inside the nose and you can always take the baby into the shower or use a vaporizer for the same purpose. Now if the baby's runny nose goes on longer than ten days you may actually be looking at a sinus infection or allergies especially if your baby has a fever that lasts more than three days or that goes away for 24 hours and then returns. In any of these cases, you really need to talk to the baby's doctor about a more thorough evaluation. Talking about how to treat a runny nose in infants, I'm Dr. David Hill."