2 Year Old Coughing.

My son (2 at the time) kept coughing and coughing. So much that he often caused himself to throw up. We tried everything. They treated him for all sorts of illnesses that it could be. We tried more fluids, etc. None of it worked and then he got so bad that he was moaning and weak, sometimes retracting when he tried to breath. It was SOO scary. They finally put him on an albuteral treatment taken thru a nebulizer. that helped...but only for a little while. He got to the point he needed it every 3-4 hours or he would come near stopping breathing. Finally, after nearly 7 weeks (I had a newborn that was also 7 weeks at the time)...I asked to see a specialist in the field of asthma and allergy. It was like night and day difference the DAY he sent us home with a Treatment PLAN. They did a full allergy test and asthma evaluation. He thankfully is only allergic to molds and because it had been a really wet spring...it was setting off things in him that began when he had RSV as an infant. They sent him home with a Flovent enhaler that he takes twice a day to prevent an attack. We also have tons of albuteral and steroids for his nebulizer should he get bad and have an attack. Only twice has he gotten really bad again. Once with a cold and once when he had H1N1. I have to watch him carefully when he gets a cold...it immediately sets up in his lungs and he can get bad, fast...but now we have the tools to fight it. The biggest thing that stuck out to me was that the specialist said, "often a pediatrician will treat the symptom of a childs cough and try to cure the sumptom...but truly, the sooner the cause is addressed and treated...the better. Often childhood asthma is a temporary thing and if treated correctly, they will grow out of it. That is what we;re praying for at this point. He did say it would be a 6-12 month treatment plan and then we would re-evaluate. So...that is about where we're at now. The bottom line is seek treatment from a specialist and get the answers you want. You know the cause isn't being treated if your little one is STILL coughing. Good luck. I know how scary it is to see your little one cough and cough.
Hope this helps a little.

howdy :)

My little one was coughing for months & months. He had "classic" asthma symptoms but we ended up taking him to get tested for allergies and found out he is allergic to molds & dogs. We got a couple of HEPA air filters for the house, and a new HEPA vacuum. It's like night & day. We also have humidifiers running 24/7 in his room and in the living room. We wanted to try some other methods before going the steroid route to see if we could avoid them and it seemed to work for his problem... Wishing your kiddo the best ad hopefully you get it worked out soon!

Cheers

My heart goes out to you - we went through this from October to December!! I truly think that it is just a nasty virus that is going around to be honest. My son was coughing for 7 weeks, my middle daughter for 5, and my youngest daughter (18 months) was coughing for NINE weeks. It got a little better, got little worse, changed from barky to productive, back to dry etc. throughout that time but never went away. She went through a whole round of antibiotics and it did nothing for the cough. It finally went away on its own. The kids in my son's kindergarten class ALL had the cough and his teacher has literally had it for 3 months now. Just when she thinks it is gone it comes back. She has been through 2 rounds of diff antibiotics. Her doctor told her that it is probably that she is getting hit almost back to back with different virus strains. I would get a second opinion about the asthma... there are some nasty things going around this year and you don't want to be treating something with steroids unnecessarily. I am not familiar with an asthma diagnosis but is it definitive or does it just mean that the lungs were clear of other things? Does he have even a little bit of a runny nose along with the cough? My 18 month old had a runny nose for about 4 days, two different times during her 9 week-long cough but other than that she had no other symptoms.

I am going thru exactly the same thing with my 4yr old. She has been coughing for the last 5 weeks. She did a round of antibiotics, steroids, the inhaler, and for the last week has been on a breathing machine 4 times a day...and she's still hacking away. Since you've already had an x-ray that rules out that he possibly swallowed something and it's caught in his lungs (my pediatrician told me this was a possibility even though my daughter never swallows random objects at this age). The only things I can think of is it possibly allergy related? Could there be mold, dust, pet dander, or something in your home that may be bugging him. We're starting to go that route since our daughter has had brochitis/pneumonia several times in the 3 yrs we've lived here...so we're looking into having out air ducts cleaned (OUCH expensive!). But if it'll help her breathing/lungs. We've already checked for mold and there's no issue there. So anyhow- that's the only thin I can think to ask the doctor. Good luck. Hope he gets well soon.

My son has asthma as well. He's eight now, but he's pretty much had it his whole life. When he was old enough to chew a pill the doctor started him on Singulair. It's a chewable pill that he takes every day at dinnertime. His asthma has improved tremendously. If he's playing outside when it's cold for a long time, sometimes he gets a bed cough. When that happen we give him a treatment with the nebulizer. So I would talk to your doctor about the prescription Singulair, and for those few times he has a flare up, the nebulizer with Albuterol for the medicine. They both have been a God-send. Hope this helps.

Between the ages of 4 months and 9 months, my daughter had a chronic cough. The doctor was worried because she was not gaining weight and tested her for everything, including asthma. My doctor could not figure it out and switched us to a different pediatrician. The new doctor took a blood test and discovered she had whooping cough, even though she had been immunized. She got put on the Zithromax antibiotic and it cleared right up. I would maybe see if they could do a blood test. Hope this helps.

Croup is definitely going around. I would ask about that. Any other respiratory illness (cold, flu, etc.) can make asthma worse. I would also second the comment to go to a specialist. I also know that when I was little, the American Lung Association had events (I guess they were meetings...I just remember eating popcorn and getting a shirt with lungs on it), and parents and kids were taught how to work with asthma. Ways to loosen the phlegm, etc., and I think that it was helpful to my parents to see that they weren't alone and to hear from other parents. If you would like that technique to loosen the phlegm, send me a message.

It sounds a little like croup. During a coughing spell do you take him into the cold air and it stops it or lessens it? My twins kept getting RSV till they were 2 and had to use a nebulizer to keep them out of the hospital. Have you tried a warm mist or a cold mist humidifier, or have you boiled a pan of hot water on your stove to put moisture in the air? Johnson's also makes a soothing vapor bath that you put in the bathtub like bubbles that works really well to open their lungs and help them breathe better.

This may seem far fetched but here is what happened to us. My son was like yours and just had this chronic cough, he didn't seem sick, it just never went away. Look out if he ever got a full blown cold or flu with it because then he would have croup to the extent that we ended up with an overnight hospital stay because he couldn't get enough oxygen. We tried inhalers, nebulizers, steroids, you name it.

The doc was at a loss, I was at a loss, my friends and family were at a loss and I was STRESSED OUT! Then one day my husband mentioned that he was sleeping on a down pillow and maybe he was just allergic to it. SERIOUSLY? Could it be that easy? Well, it was worth a try, within two days of removing the pillow, his cough was gone, and he seemed fine from then on. Crazy huh?

It has been a year and a half now and I must say, he does still have problems if he gets a cold. He will instantly get croup or start weezing and that is when the inhaler comes in handy, but never again did we have the chronic coughing or croup-like symptoms.

Long story to a short point, maybe his pillow or coats or something are down and bother him? Maybe you have an animal, a wool rug or anything else in the house that bothers him or aggravates his asthma symptoms? Who knows, but it is worth checking it out.

Good luck!