Sick 9 month old

Soothing Your Sick Child

Written by WebMD Editorial Contributors

A sick baby is rarely a happy baby. Your infant or toddler will likely be fussy and out of sorts during their illness. You'll want to check in with your pediatrician, of course, and follow all treatment instructions. Beyond that, you'll just have to wait for the illness to run its course, especially if your baby is sick with a viral infection. In the meantime, there are a number of steps you can take to soothe your sick infant.

Plenty of liquids

Make sure that your child is getting plenty of liquids to prevent dehydration. Depending on whether you are breastfeeding or bottle-feeding, offer your infant the breast or bottle more often than usual to provide both hydration and comfort. Your sick baby may not feed for their normal duration so smaller more frequent will prevent dehydration. Your infant may also enjoy a small 2 to 4 ounce bottle filled with cool water if they are older than 6 months. Don't give water to your infant if they are under 6 months old because their kidneys are not mature enough to handle water. Breast milk or formula is best at this stage. If they drink less than usual, remember to offer it more often. Your doctor may recommend a schedule of feedings based on your baby's weight to prevent dehydration.

Plenty of rest

Lots of rest and sleep will soothe your sick baby and help them heal. Put your baby to bed early, if you can, and encourage naps. Avoid situations that will over-stimulate your baby -- and possibly expose others to their germs -- and keep them as quiet as possible.

Nose drops

If your baby's nose is particularly congested, you can use over-the-counter saline drops, gel, or spray to thin mucus and relieve congestion. Check with your doctor first and ask which specific products they recommend. Use two drops in each nostril before feeding and bedtime, or whenever your baby seems particularly congested

Nasal syringe

After you use nose drops or spray, use a nasal syringe to clear your baby's nose of mucus so they can breathe more easily. Clear nostrils two to three times a day using a nasal aspirator, especially before feeding and bedtime.

Humidifier

Running a cold-mist humidifier in your infant's room will help keep air moist and ease congestion. (Cool-mist humidifiers are recommended over warm, because warm-mist devices present the danger of scalding.) Be sure to follow the manufacturer's instructions for changing filters and keeping the humidifier clean, and fill with fresh water every day to prevent mold and bacteria.

Warm bath

Not only will a warm bath soothe your sick infant, it will ease aches and pains, and steam from the warm water will also help clear congestion. Dry your baby thoroughly afterward to prevent chills.

Elevate head

Keep your infant's head slightly elevated to make breathing easier.

TLC

By far the best way to soothe your sick baby is to give them lots of love and attention. Hold them and engage in quiet play, give them an infant massage, or read and sing to them. If you are breastfeeding, they may want to nurse more, which will reassure and comfort them. If they like being in a snugly or sling, bundle them up and do some chores, or take a walk. Talk to them and reassure them, whether they are old enough to understand or not, as your voice will help relax and soothe your sick infant.

Colds (0-12 Months)

Is this your child's symptom?

Runny nose and sore throat caused by a virus
You think your child has a cold. Reason: family members, friends or other children in child care have same symptoms.
Also called an Upper Respiratory Infection (URI).

Symptoms of a Cold

Runny or stuffy nose
The nasal discharge starts clear but changes to gray. It can also be yellow or green.
Most children have a fever at the start.
At times, the child may also have a cough and hoarse voice. Sometimes, watery eyes and swollen lymph nodes in the neck also occur.

Cause of Colds

Colds are caused by many respiratory viruses. Healthy children get about 6 colds in the first year.
Influenza virus causes a bad cold with more fever and muscle aches.
Colds are not serious. With a cold, about 5 to 10&percnt; of children develop a complication. Most often, this is an ear or sinus infection. These are caused by a bacteria.

Trouble Breathing: How to Tell

Trouble breathing is a reason to see a doctor right away. Respiratory distress is the medical name for trouble breathing. Here are symptoms to worry about:

Struggling for each breath or shortness of breath
Tight breathing so that your child can barely cry
Ribs are pulling in with each breath (called retractions)
Breathing has become noisy (such as wheezes)
Breathing is much faster than normal
Lips or face turn a blue color

When to Call for Colds (0-12 Months)

Call 911 Now

Severe trouble breathing (struggling for each breath, can barely cry)
You think your child has a life-threatening emergency

Call Doctor or Seek Care Now

Trouble breathing, but not severe. Exception: gone after cleaning out the nose.
Wheezing (purring or whistling sound) occurs
Breathing is much faster than normal
Trouble swallowing and new onset drooling
High-risk child (such as with chronic lung disease)
Weak immune system. Examples are sickle cell disease, HIV, cancer, organ transplant, taking oral steroids.
Fever over 104° F (40° C)
Fever in baby less than 12 weeks old. Caution: Do NOT give your baby any fever medicine before being seen.
Your child looks or acts very sick
You think your child needs to be seen, and the problem is urgent

Contact Doctor Within 24 Hours

Age less than 6 months old
Earache or ear drainage
Yellow or green pus from eyes
Fever lasts more than 3 days
Fever returns after gone for more than 24 hours
You think your child needs to be seen, but the problem is not urgent

Contact Doctor During Office Hours

Blocked nose wakes up from sleep
Yellow scabs around the nasal openings. Use an antibiotic ointment.
Nasal discharge lasts more than 2 weeks
You have other questions or concerns

Self Care at Home

Mild cold with no other problems

Seattle Children's Urgent Care Locations

If your child’s illness or injury is life-threatening, call 911.

Bellevue
Everett
Federal Way
Seattle

Care Advice for a Cold

What You Should Know About Colds:
- It's normal for healthy children to get at least 6 colds a year. This is because there are so many viruses that cause colds. With each new cold, your child's body builds up immunity to that virus.
- Most parents know when their child has a cold. Sometimes, they have it too or other children in child care have it. Most often, you don't need to call or see your child's doctor. You do need to call your child's doctor if your child develops a complication. Examples are an earache or if the symptoms last too long.
- The normal cold lasts about 2 weeks. There are no drugs to make it go away sooner.
- But, there are good ways to help many of the symptoms. With most colds, the starting symptom is a runny nose. This is followed in 3 or 4 days by a stuffy nose. The treatment for each symptom is different.
- Here is some care advice that should help.
For a Runny Nose with Lots of Discharge: Suction the Nose
- The nasal mucus and discharge are washing germs out of the nose and sinuses.
- For younger children, gently suction the nose with a suction bulb.
- Put petroleum jelly on the skin under the nose. Wash the skin first with warm water. This will help to protect the nostrils from any redness.
Nasal Saline to Open a Blocked Nose:
- Use saline (salt water) nose spray to loosen up the dried mucus. If you don't have saline, you can use a few drops of water. Use distilled water, bottled water or boiled tap water.
- Step 1. Put 1 drop in each nostril.
- Step 2. Suction each nostril out while closing off the other nostril. Then, do the other side.
- Step 3. Repeat nose drops and suctioning until the discharge is clear.
- How Often. Do nasal saline rinses when your child can't breathe through the nose.
- Limit to no more than 4 times per day. Before breast or bottle feedings are a good time.
- Saline nose drops or spray can be bought in any drugstore. No prescription is needed.
- Reason for nose drops: Suction alone can't remove dried or sticky mucus. Also, babies can't nurse or drink from a bottle unless the nose is open.
- Other option: use a warm shower to loosen mucus. Breathe in the moist air, then suction each nostril.
- For young children, can also use a wet cotton swab to remove sticky mucus.
Fluids - Offer More:
- Try to get your child to drink extra formula or breastmilk.
- Goal: Keep your child well hydrated.
- It also will thin out the mucus discharge from the nose.
- It also loosens up any phlegm in the lungs. Then it's easier to cough up.
Humidifier:
- If the air in your home is dry, use a humidifier.
- Reason: Dry air makes nasal mucus thicker.
Drugstore Medicines for Colds:
- Cold Medicines. Don't give any drugstore cold or cough medicines to young children. They are not approved by the FDA under 6 years. Reasons: not safe and can cause serious side effects. Also, they are not helpful. They can't remove dried mucus from the nose. Nasal saline works best.
- No Antibiotics. Antibiotics are not helpful for colds. Antibiotics may be used if your child gets an ear or sinus infection.
Other Symptoms of Colds - Treatment:
- Pain or Fever. Use acetaminophen (such as Tylenol) to treat muscle aches, sore throat or headaches. Another choice is an ibuprofen product (such as Advil). Caution: avoid ibuprofen until 6 months or older. You can also use these medicines for fever above 102° F (39° C).
- Red Eyes. Rinse eyelids often with wet cotton balls.
Return to Child Care:
- Your child can go back to child care after the fever is gone.
- For practical purposes, the spread of colds can't be prevented.
What to Expect:
- Fever can last 2-3 days
- Nasal drainage can last 7-14 days
- Cough can last 2-3 weeks
Call Your Doctor If:
- Trouble breathing occurs
- Earache occurs
- Fever lasts more than 3 days or goes above 104° F (40° C)
- Any fever if under 12 weeks old
- Nasal discharge lasts more than 14 days
- Cough lasts more than 3 weeks
- You think your child needs to be seen
- Your child becomes worse

And remember, contact your doctor if your child develops any of the 'Call Your Doctor' symptoms.

Disclaimer: this health information is for educational purposes only. You, the reader, assume full responsibility for how you choose to use it.

Last Reviewed: 11/18/2022

Last Revised: 09/18/2022

Dozens of mutations: how SARS-CoV-2 has changed in the body of an HIV patient in 9 months

Doctors from South Africa have described a new case of many months of presence of coronavirus in the body - a young woman with untreated HIV had COVID-19 for almost a year, during which time the coronavirus acquired at least 21 new mutations. In people with weak immune systems, the virus can remain in the body for months, accumulating mutations that can make it more dangerous, doctors warn. This is not the first time this has happened and further highlights the importance of protecting people with HIV and other diseases that weaken the immune system from infection.

The world has already faced several waves of coronavirus, but the origin of its new strains has not been fully studied. According to one version, people with weakened immunity become the source of mutations - cancer patients on chemotherapy, patients taking immunosuppressors with transplanted organs, people with progressive HIV. The inability of the body to get rid of SARS-CoV-2 leads to the fact that the virus lives for months, mutating and acquiring properties that can make it more dangerous.

A team of researchers from the South African University of KwaZulu-Natal described a new case in an as yet unpeered paper and posted it on the preprint service SSRN .

In September 2021, a 20-year-old woman presented to a hospital in Cape Town with complaints of sore throat, poor appetite, difficulty swallowing and general malaise. From birth, the patient was a carrier of HIV and took antiretroviral drugs, but in early 2021, for an unspecified reason, she began to neglect them. She has not been vaccinated against the coronavirus.

The woman was in a clear mind, had no breathing problems and neurological disorders. The heart, kidneys and liver were fine, the lymph nodes were not enlarged. Analyzes revealed COVID-19and progressive HIV infection.

Although the patient resumed ART in the hospital, SARS-CoV-2 did not leave the body. Doctors found out that she took the first test for SARS-CoV-2 back in January 2021, living in a rural area, and the analysis was positive.

After receiving the January swab sample from the patient's nose, the doctors compared it with September and October. Phylogenetic analysis showed that the same virus was present in all three swabs. There was no talk of re-infection - the patient was sick with COVID-19for more than nine months.

“During this period, the virus acquired at least ten mutations in the spike protein glycoprotein and 11 mutations outside it,” the authors write. “Additional spike mutations included six mutations in the receptor-binding domain, a deletion of amino acid residues in the N-terminal domain, which leads to antibody neutralization and is often seen in chronic infections, and two substitutions in the S2 domain. ”

Some of the resulting mutations had time to disappear - they appeared in the September sample, but disappeared in the October one.

Only by the end of November the body was strong enough to get rid of SARS-CoV-2.

Comparison of the patient's virus genome with 7,977 other genomes, including 366 from South Africa, did not match, the researchers note, so there is no evidence that the patient infected anyone with the mutant strain. However, this cannot be ruled out.

“Our case adds to the evidence that severe immunosuppression associated with uncontrolled HIV infection can lead to chronic SARS-CoV-2 infection,” the researchers note. “Such infections not only ensure the continuous isolation of infectious virions, but also lead to the accumulation of mutations, some of which may lead to the emergence of new variants. Therefore, it is important that countries with a high prevalence of HIV infection encourage timely diagnosis of HIV and the use of antiretroviral drugs. ”

Previously, specialists from the same university described a similar case in a 36-year-old patient with HIV — she was ill with COVID-19 for 233 days, during which time SARS-CoV-2 accumulated more than 30 mutations in her body. 13 of them were associated with a protein spike that the virus needs to penetrate and infect cells.

An estimated 8 million people worldwide are living with HIV without knowing they are infected. And 1.7 million have problems with treatment and ART does not help them enough. Thus, almost 10 million people can become carriers of COVID-19for many months and thus give the virus the opportunity to mutate without hindrance. However, without the necessary amount of data on HIV-infected COVID-19 carriers, it is too early to draw conclusions about the extent of the risks.

And an elderly British man who underwent chemotherapy due to leukemia, was ill COVID-19 305 days. During this time, he almost halved his weight, did not get out of bed for weeks and waited for death. He was cured with the help of an experimental combination of monoclonal antibodies, and the man was able to return to normal life after a few weeks.

Feeding a sick child

Publication date: 12/15/2016 08:22

April 22nd, 2016 Olga.

While the child grows up, he will be ill with various diseases more than once. About 80% is accounted for by SARS. Any disease (we are now talking about the flu, SARS) is characterized by poor health of the child - malaise, cough, runny nose, weakness, and maybe intestinal upset. And all this affects the appetite of the child. If a child has caught a cold, mothers always ask themselves the question: how to feed him properly? Proper nutrition of a sick child will help to quickly cope with the disease.

During an illness, the baby always has a poor appetite. There are physiological reasons for this:

at elevated temperatures, blood circulation in the stomach slows down. because the body sends blood to vital organs: the heart and lungs. The process of digestion and assimilation of food slows down and the child needs less food than usual;
during an illness, the liver actively fights with toxins, the products of the vital activity of viruses and the decay of damaged cells, so a large amount of food carries an additional burden;
the toxins themselves poison the body and the child, when he feels bad, not at all before eating;
stuffy nose, sore throat, difficult to swallow.

Nutrition should be appropriate for the child's age;
during illness, do not introduce new foods into the diet;
food should be sparing - liquid or semi-liquid;
make small meals if the baby does not want to eat, and the number of feedings can be increased;
if the child refuses to eat, let him drink more fluids (water, compote, fruit drink, rosehip broth).

From the diet during the period of illness should be excluded:

Hard-to-digest foods - fatty meat, whole grain cereals, fresh vegetables and fruits.
Foods harmful to the liver - fatty dairy products, chocolate, vegetable oil, lard, confectionery.
Coarse, which can damage the mucous membrane - nuts, seeds, crackers, cookies.

Useful menu

During an illness, a child needs food that is well absorbed by a weakened body. Therefore, chicken broth, vegetable soups, stewed and boiled vegetables are perfect for feeding a child during SARS.

To avoid mechanical irritation of the stomach, choose foods that are low in fiber. What foods are low in fiber? These are potatoes, cauliflower, pumpkin, rice and semolina, animal products.

Potatoes are especially delicate in fiber, so include mashed potatoes in your menu more often. You can cook mashed potatoes with sausage, cheese. Beautifully decorate the dish.

Animal protein must be present in the diet of a sick child, since it is a building material for protective antibodies. They are rich in lean meat - veal, beef, lean pork. For soups, use secondary broths from turkey meat, rabbit, chicken breast.

What else can you feed a child during illness? Yogurt helps out well, especially homemade, with the addition of berries.

We cook porridge for the child: semolina, oatmeal, you can also add berries from jam or defrosted.

A sick child needs vitamins. You can make vitamin drinks from rose hips, berries, cook jelly, dried fruit compote, berry juice. . Such drinks will alleviate the condition of the baby if the throat hurts. But with indigestion, milk should not be given at all.

To increase the appetite of the dish, it is desirable to arrange it beautifully so that the child immediately has a desire to eat it.

Feeding a convalescent child

After an acute period of illness, the recovery period begins when the baby is on the mend and nutrition during this period plays an important role. The food of a recovering baby should be rich in energy in order to restore strength, contain minerals and vitamins, the food should be well absorbed.

As soon as the symptoms of the disease recede, do not rush to pounce on a child with enhanced nutrition, it will take a few more days to restore digestion. Continue to follow the diet, adding lean meat and fish, cheese, eggs, boiled vegetables and fruits to it.

Ideal for casseroles, puddings, steamed cutlets, vegetable soups. Introduce fruits and vegetables into the diet and do not forget about sour-milk products that will help restore the disturbed intestinal microflora. Let during this period the food be fractional, the child eat a little. And when the body gets stronger, the child will return to a normal diet.

Choosing tactics

When feeding a sick child, parents should remember that it is impossible to force-feed a child!

We provide a diet with easily digestible products. Some parents find it difficult to feed the baby during illness, he categorically refuses to eat. Psychologists advise not to turn feeding into a circus with musical numbers so that the child eats "well, at least one spoonful.