Gummed up nasal boogies

[rootofnewt]

Parents who have gone before . . . I have a question.

In the early morning--sometimes around 5am, Ronan wakes up somewhat with a really stuffy nose. Except, there's no visible snot. It's obviously further back, where the sinuses drain into the nasal passages/throat. But it's bad enough that he can't breathe from his nose. Needless to say, when he half-rouses for that nursing session, he quickly rouses all the way, because he has to go "suck suck, unlatch, breathe. suck suck, unlatch, breathe." It's not very conducive to baby going back to bed. I've tried putting him to sleep tummy to tummy with me, propping myself up on pillows. He doesn't much like that. I've tried letting him sleep in the crook of my arm, propped up again. Again, not a favorite (and tends to impinge on various nerves of mine). Today, I even propped him on a fairly firm pillow (he's a bad/side sleeper). That gave me an extra hour, but he wasn't sleeping very deeply.

And when he can't breathe, he cries, making the mucus issue worse. After about 10-20 minutes sitting up, he's clear to breathe and nurse just fine, but if I sit him up in the bedroom, he's WIDE awake. So we just get up.

Normally, the guess is irritants in the bedroom (at least, so far as Dr. Sears says). Well, I have a dust mite allergy, among everything else. We shower before bed. All the bedding gets washed weekly on hot water and dried on high heat. Pillows and mattress are in encasings. We use vellux blankets. We have a HEPA standard air filtration unit. We use the ultra (actually, the new higher filtration) Filtrete air filters in the furnace.

And last night, I added a warm water vaporizer/humidifier. I had it on the lowest setting, since it can't go all night on the highest (small unit). Tonight, I'll try running it on high when Ronan first goes down, then refilling it around midnight when we go to bed and let it run on low all night.

Thoughts?

Frankly, I've been skittish about the humidifier. The nice thing about winter is that the lowered humidity levels cause the dust mite population to level off somewhat. But something has to change.

The really weird thing? He doesn't have this problem during his naps. He naps in the same room, same bed. It's only for an hour or two, but he doesn't get stuffed up.

Comments

[mustelidmania.livejournal.com]

I do think that the stuffiness is worse the longer he sleeps. It was that way with JDavyd too. Try cranking up the humidifier like you are thinking of doing. Sometimes the tiniest bit of vaseline under each nostril helps as well. And of course, not sleeping flat.