Natural Cough Remedies For Babies

When your baby comes down with a cough, you want to do whatever you can to make her more comfortable. Yet at the same time, you don't want to grab over the counter medication, since there are usually side effects and chemicals that you'd rather not expose babies to if it can be avoided. What's more, recent studies have shown that cough syrups are worthless and the sugar they contain may even prolong illness.

Thankfully there are quite a few natural remedies that you can try to calm your baby's cough. If your baby seems congested, take her in the bathroom and run a hot shower. The steam from the shower will help loosen that congestion in her lungs.

Baby

Putting your baby in a warm (not hot) bath can have the same effect. Make the bath even more effective by adding a few drops of eucalyptus, sage or thyme oil into the bath water. The vapors from these essential oils will help open baby's airways, allowing her to breath easier. The vapors from these oils will also sooth a sore throat.

Natural Cough Remedies For Babies

If your baby's cough is caused by croup, sometimes the best course of action is to wrap her up warmly and take her out in the night air. The cold air sometimes calms the inflammation in the upper airways.

You can also use sage and thyme to make tea out of them. The warm herbal tea will help clear mucus out of your baby's lungs. Please check with your pediatrician to find out at what age you can start giving your baby these herbal teas.

Licorice tea is another great natural cough treatment. Licorice has antibacterial properties that will help you baby fight the bacteria that are causing the cough. It also soothes the throat and calms the respiratory tract; helping her get some much needed sleep. Make a cup of licorice tea and give it to your baby as warm as possible, of course without burning her.

Another very effective and gentle natural cough remedy for babies is an herbal rub. Start with 3 to 4 tablespoons of olive oil and add 2 drops of essential oils to the olive oil. Good oils to use are eucalyptus, sage, rosemary and peppermint oil. A mixture of eucalyptus and rosemary works really well at night, since the eucalyptus will calm your baby's cough and allow her to breath easier, while the rosemary helps calm her down and drift off to sleep.

Mix the olive oil and essential oils well, then apply the mixture to your baby's chest and back. If the baby is small, swaddle her in a soft blanket, otherwise keep her back and chest as covered as possible with a thicker, tight fitting shirt to build up body heat which will allow the essential oils to vaporize. As baby breathes in the fumes, breathing will get easier.

A humidifier is another great option when it comes to making your coughing baby more comfortable. Use a few of the same essential oils suggested above and run the humidifier in baby's bedroom.

Some Moms have found that breastmilk will help soothe and heal a cough better than any other drink. If you're nursing and baby develops a cough, don't stop breastfeeding. Increase baby's feedings. Breastmilk is not a dairy product and is the safest food for baby when he's sick.

This article is provided for information purposes only. Please consult your baby's health care provider before trying home remedies.

Natural Cough Remedies For Babies

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Thrush in Babies - How to Cure Infant Thrush Naturally and Permanently

Life as a little baby can be hard: so many sights, sounds and sensations to adjust to. Thrush can make life for a little baby - and mom - even harder. If thrush is the most serious health issue you have to contend with, then in some ways you're very lucky. However, that doesn't make thrush easy to deal with.

Without the right approach, treating babies with thrush can be difficult and frustrating. Feedings, diaper changes, night-wakings, and the innumerable other responsibilities of caring for a newborn can make oral thrush seem downright overwhelming. Let's look at some of the most common symptoms of oral thrush:

Infant

-Creamy, white patches on the tongue, gums or inside the cheeks
-Difficulty nursing and/or reluctance to nurse
-Unusually fussy
-Baby's mouth seems sore, painful.

The yeast cell candida albicans (which causes thrush) loves the warm, wet, sugar-rich environment of babies' mouths. Breast milk is rich in the natural sugar lactose, while formulas contain added sweeteners; whether a baby is breastfed or bottle-fed, yeast cells will have ample food to grow and multiply.

The prevalent use of antibiotics, both for c-sections and strep B bacteria, has made infant thrush more common than ever. Antibiotics wipe out both mom and baby's natural yeast defenses, making yeast overgrowth more likely. If mom has vaginal yeast, this may cause baby to catch the yeast coming through the birth canal. Prematurity or use of steroids may also make thrush more likely.

There are two common approaches to treating babies with thrush:
1.) use prescription pharmaceuticals such as Nystatin or Diflucan to kill the yeast or
2.) to kill the yeast with "natural" or home remedies. I say "natural" because some common home remedies, such as gentian violet, are not really natural. Gentian violet is a petrol derivative and carries increased long-term risk for oral cancer.

In any case, both the pharmaceutical and "natural" approach are imperfect solutions because they don't stop the yeast from growing back. Pharmaceuticals such as Diflucan and other antifungals carry the additional risk of serious side effects, which is especially troubling for a newborn. (Nystatin is the safest of the pharmaceutical drugs but is not very effective and may sometimes cause the yeast to mutate into a more difficult to treat form.)

Some thrush home remedies carry significant risks as well, which is worrisome since well-meaning mothers may simply not be aware of potential side effects. I've seen products containing colloidal silver, tea tree oil and oregano oil all advertised for infant thrush problems: each of these has significant concerns as far as treating babies.

My own personal experiences with the difficulty of treating thrush naturally and permanently led me to develop a comprehensive approach to treat infant thrush quickly and safely, with only positive side effects: zero harmful ones. The key lies both in killing the existing yeast (safely) and curing the underlying imbalance that allowed the yeast cells to grow out of control in the first place.

Thrush in Babies - How to Cure Infant Thrush Naturally and Permanently

Rebecca Haworth is a professional health writer with more than 15 years of experience in the alternative health industry. Her ebook, "The 3-Day Thrush Cure" is specifically designed to help breastfeeding mothers and babies suffering from thrush to overcome this problem quickly and naturally. Visit http://www.GetRidofThrush.com for more information.