A Salute to Salt

April 27th, 2008. Published under health. 3 Comments.

We went on a picnic today. It was warm outside. I’m glad that winter’s over.  Cold season is over too.

Coughing and colds don’t really worry me that much as long as it’s not the baby suffering from it. Babies can’t blow their noses to clear up their airways. They hardly even want to take their medicines. You can’t reason with them. How will they ever understand that taking more liquids will dissolve their phlegm resulting to greater comfort for them?

My husband is a nurse who has seen too many urgent care horror stories. When he hears the baby cough once or twice, he starts telling me about his patients who became this and that because their parents didn’t do this and that. You call the doctor for an appointment and the earliest time you can see her is in two weeks. By that time, my husband would say, my baby’s cough would have worsened into pneumonia. He always insists on antibiotics right away. Sometimes I get irritated and explode at him “Are you trying to frighten me!?”. To make matters worse, the government recently pulled out all OTC(over the counter) cold medicines for babies out of the shelves. Infants, according to them, are being over-medicated. I can’t change my husband’s health views. I have a patient who can’t understand the value of hydration.   All OTC cold medicine for infants are gone. Our family doctor is  inaccessible for two weeks.  So I am left with only one trusty home remedy : the saline solution.

It is actually a better and quicker nasal decongestant than any cold medicine. However, applying it can be quite a challenge. I was first introduced to it seven years ago, when I had my son in the Philippines. I told the doctor that my child’s breathing sounded stuffy. She gave me Salinase in a tiny plastic bottle. I would squirt the solution up his nostril while he was lying down. It made him scream bloody murder so I didn’t really like giving it to him. By the time I had my second baby in the States I have become a wiser person. Having gone through nursing school and seen respiratory therapists at work, no amount of crying could unnerve me.

Whenever my baby girl had a cold I would use  saline solution, in addition to an oral nasal decongestant medicine. I liked to use the Little Noses brand (mainly because of the cute picture on the packaging). All solutions are the same actually. There are even store brands that are cheaper and just as effective. Should you ever buy one, get those that come in plastic squirt bottles.  I have tried those in metal canisters with a nozzle on top and a button that you have to press.  No good!   I can never get them to spray right. I always end up wasting the contents. Ease of application is important.

The baby will not like it (Heck, even I don’t like it!)  and will squirm and struggle.  You have to hold the baby firmly with one hand and administer with the other hand.  With complicated metal sprays, I could never do the job.  Even if I manage to insert the nozzle into the nostril, I couldn’t get the solution out fast enough. Before I figure out how to press the button correctly, the baby will have moved her head away and it all just ends up on her face and her eyes.  With the squirt bottle, one squeeze is all you need and you’re done. 

It is very safe.  You can use it as often as you need it. Hey, it’s just salt! The tuyo(salted dried fish) doesn’t scare us so there’s no reason why we’d be afraid of this one. 

Salt melts away the icky, sticky mucus inside the nasal passages.  The baby feels relieved right away. The stuffy breathing disappears.   If the baby still sounds congested, the mucus could be thick and tough.  Put some more drops and use a bulb syringe(this is one tool all mothers with infants must never be without) to suction out the secretions.  I know it is time to give the solution and to suction when I notice that the baby is fussier than usual, when nothing that I do can ever soothe her.  People who have trouble breathing are really restless.  They’re going low on oxygen so their body is in a panic mode.