Cough

Today

My niece's Facebook status today reported that her two-year old has croup. Poor little scrap.

In my day

From the age of about six weeks Becky was plagued with all kinds of upper respiratory tract infections. She had coughs and colds, chest, throat and ear infections. I don't really know the reasons why she was so vulnerable. Maybe it was down to the fact that my repeated breast abscesses meant that I had to abandon breast-feeding at five weeks or that the antibiotics I'd been taking before then affected her. Who can say? I removed her cot from our room because her constant sniffling and wheezing were impossible to sleep through. But I would be relieved in the morning to hear her cough: it meant that she was alive.

But I remember visit after visit to the doctor with my coughing, snotty little baby. Doctors were more cavalier in their attitude to giving antibiotics then and Becky had several courses until I pointed out that a: she didn't seem to be getting any better and b: she always seemed to come out in a rash when taking them. After that we struggled forward with traditional remedies.

Croup was perhaps the most frightening of all the infections. She would become breathless and wheezy and quite unable to sleep. We did bring her bed into our room on those occasions because we were genuinely concerned that she might not survive the night. The standard folk remedy in those days was steam. We would shut the bedroom doors and windows, bring a kettle into the bedroom and plug in. The room filled with steam and the walls dripped with moisture. And it did seem to help; after a while Becky's breathing would become easier and she would relax into sleep.

She continued to be troubled with these problems, exacerbated by contracting German Measles, Chicken Pox and Whooping Cough all at the same time, until she was about four. Through all this, it must be said, she continued to develop normally and was always a pretty cheerful baby. The problems all went away when she was about four. Either her self-imposed change of diet had some effect or she'd established some sort of resistance, but she was never so ill again through all her childhood.

Get well soon, Li'l David, you must be feeling miserable.