Babies Experience Wheezing, How to Deal With It?
When a baby has a respiratory illness or disorder, the baby's respiratory tract becomes more easily filled with mucus compared to toddlers, children or adults. This can cause wheezing. Wheezing is a situation where the baby when drawing and exhaling seems to sigh or make a sound.
The Causes of Wheezing in Babies
1. Bronchiolitis
This disease is caused by a viral infection, which generally attacks respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). The small respiratory tract called bronchioles swell so the baby has difficulty breathing. If treated, this disease will threaten the baby's life.
Bronchiolitis is characterized by the appearance of wheezing, breathing too quickly, coughing and high fever. Usually, this disease attacks newborns for less than 24 months.
Treatment for bronchiolitis itself requires that Moms have to be extra careful in regulating baby's eating and sleeping patterns. As for cases that are very severe, the baby must immediately take him to the hospital to get treatment.
During treatment, the baby will be supported with oxygen. Nebulizer or inhaler may also be prescribed by the doctor who handles it.
2. Common cold
If the first cause of wheezing makes Moms feel worried or even scared, it is different from the second cause, which is the common cold. Where in the first two years of age, most babies will indeed experience 8 to 10 viral infections in the respiratory tract, one of which is a cold.
How to know that it is a common cold? Moms can see from the symptoms shown by the baby, such as nasal congestion, mucus from the baby's nose, coughing, wheezing and fever with a temperature of about 37 degrees Celsius.
Because this is a common cold, overcoming wheezing and various symptoms can be done by avoiding all kinds of cold medicines for babies. Why? Because the common cold in infants generally will heal or at least improve within 2 weeks.
If it has been more than that time, especially babies experiencing wheezing accompanied by coughing and sneezing, immediately contact a pediatrician to confirm the condition of Moms' baby. In infants under 3 months of age, colds have the potential to develop pneumonia, RSV or other serious conditions very quickly.
3. Asthma
Jobs that are rather difficult to diagnose asthma in newborns. As Moms knows, asthma is a chronic respiratory disease that causes the respiratory tract to swell, narrow and produce a lot of mucus.
However, not all wheezing can be associated with asthma symptoms. About 30% of newborns who experience cough with the wheezing and runny nose, which are not asthma.
Wheezing that can be recognized as a symptom of asthma generally occurs repeatedly. In other words, the wheezing recurred with a frequency that was quite frequent.
Treatment of asthma in newborns is done by handling the symptoms that appear. In doing this, an inhaler or nebulizer is used. Including also checking family history, because asthma can indeed be lowered and the effect is very strong.
Common Ways To Prevent Wheezing
Moms can also do some simple actions that can help the baby avoid wheezing. Like:
- Clean the sofa and all the furniture in the house so that dust does not accumulate.
- Install ventilation with a good air in and out system.
- Wash all sleeping equipment using hot water so that dust mites cannot multiply in them.
- Frequently changing ventilation filters and air conditioners.
- For the last Moms need to monitor the baby's reaction when near animals, especially cats and dogs. Because if they wheeze or cough when they are close to animals, one of the biggest possibilities is that babies experience allergies to animal hair.
