Ok, here’s the dirty truth… Being a Mom is sometimes a disgusting job. You have to deal with wiping poop off of little bums, cleaning pee out of your eye (if you have a boy), spit up out of your hair, and snot out of little tiny noses. It’s a fact. Somehow when it’s your kid who depends solely upon you, it’s not so gross, but the loving thing to do.
Our little sweetie was born stuffy and it kept getting worse. It got to the point where my husband and I were genuinely getting worried that he could potentially stop breathing or not get enough air to develop normally. It seemed like when his nose was really stuffed up, he wouldn’t automatically go to mouth breathing. As if we needed ONE more thing to worry about with a newborn! So here are some natural stuffy nose cures that I have found along with my personal review of how well they worked for us and our baby.
First we tried a bulb syringe. I didn’t notice any change with just using this. The mucus was too far up in the nasal canal. Keep reading as it is necessary to have a bulb syringe in conjunction with other items to really get all that yucky stuff out.
I called the nurse at my doctor’s office to see if there was anything I could do to help him get cleared out a little. She suggested nasal drops. They are supposed to loosen the mucus and let it flow out of the nostrils. We tried and tried doing this religiously but nothing came out on its own. When used in conjunction with the bulb syringe, we got some out – enough so he could breathe, but there was obviously still stuff stuck up there.
On to the next thing we tried! I scoured Amazon reviews to see what was working for other Moms. So many people had fantastic results with the Nosefrieda aspirator. You (the parent) suck on the clear tube while putting the blue tube in the child’s nose. There is a filter so no “goo” can get in the parent’s mouth. Everything is dishwasher safe. Genius, right? Well, I couldn’t get it to work for us. I was terrified of sucking too hard and hurting the baby. I ended up returning this device.
I called the nurse again and said my baby was still struggling with a stuffy nose. She suggested a battery operated nasal aspirator for extreme cases. I knew several people who had a lot of success with these, so I bought one. It sucks really hard and kind of takes the baby’s breath away. It’s just for a second and you have control over how long it sucks, so that’s nice. It worked the first time we used it, but I couldn’t get it to get anything out after that. I will probably be returning it.
So, what’s a Mom to do? I feel like we have tried everything and a couple things worked decently, but nothing was really a cure all. And nothing worked consistently. Here’s what we have come up with the works consistently and well.
I feel like every Mom should have this baby nose picker. We have one for keeping in our house and one for the diaper bag. It was invented by a Mom. It is such a simple thing, but so genius! It works like tweezers, but they are made of plastic so they don’t scrape your baby’s nose. They have a round ball at the end so you don’t poke them. And they work! You can reach up there with the boogie snatcher and you can pull out a whole bunch of “goo” that your fingers could never get because baby’s nasal passages are so small.
Here’s what finally worked for us. First, tip baby’s head back. Put a drop or two of Little Noses (or generic) saline in each nostril. The baby sill sniff it up. Wait a minute or two for it to work it’s magic. Then use the bulb syringe to loosen the mucus on one nostril side. Then use the boogie snatcher tweezers to get the loosened stuff out of the one side. Then work on the second side. It really is so simple and inexpensive. We do this routine every morning with our now 3 month old baby and he stays clear almost all the time. Knock on wood!
I will warn you… The baby may scream and hate doing this. Mostly just because it’s scary for them and they don’t understand what’s going on. It literally only takes a couple minutes and once they are cleared out they will feel better the rest of the day. So it is definitely worth the sacrifice!
