What should parents do if their baby has a cold?

Babies have relatively poor physical constitutions and are not yet able to protect themselves, so parents become their umbrellas of protection. Colds and fevers are common diseases among babies. This is because they accidentally kick off the quilt while sleeping, or they catch a cold because they don’t wear enough clothes. These are all reasons why babies catch a cold. What should parents do when their baby catches a cold? Should they take the baby directly to the hospital for examination and then give the baby medicine? This approach is actually wrong. Let's take a closer look at the correct way.

1. Parents should touch their children's hands and feet. If the child has the above symptoms and his hands and feet are cold, they can handle it as follows:

(1) Children under 1 year old can drink brown sugar water. Brown sugar is warm in nature and can dispel cold. Give it to your child 2 to 3 times a day, using half a spoonful of brown sugar mixed with warm water each time.

(2) For children over 1 year old, add one slice of ginger; for children over 3 years old, add two slices. Add half a spoonful of brown sugar and cook it into ginger and brown sugar water for the child to drink, 2 to 3 times a day.

(3) Before going to bed at night, soak the child’s feet in warm water. Adults can touch the child’s head with their hands. As long as the child sweats slightly, it is fine. If your child's hands and feet are very cold, you can use mugwort water to soak their feet. Just take a small handful of mugwort and boil the water for your child to soak in. Soak until your child sweats. After soaking their feet, be sure to let your child drink more warm water and go to bed as early as possible. Increasing sleep time is an important guarantee for curing early colds. As long as the child drinks ginger and brown sugar water to dispel the cold, it means that the child has a lot of internal heat, so parents must also give the child more warm boiled water, let the child drink plenty of water, and urinate more. No matter it is a cold caused by viruses as Western medicine says, or a cold caused by excessive internal heat as Chinese medicine says, it can be alleviated with the excretion of urine. Don’t underestimate these cups of warm water. Even if a child is feeling unwell due to an infectious disease, as long as you let the child drink more water, the condition can be significantly alleviated.

(4) When a child is obviously unwell, it is important to adjust his diet. Once a child is sick, the digestive and absorptive ability of the gastrointestinal tract will become weak. At this time, the child can only be fed light food. In addition to being fresh, all kinds of food must be cooked well and soft. Some parents believe that children should be given supplements when they are sick. In fact, children should not be given supplements when they are sick, especially fish and shrimp, which can easily cause fever. At this time, it is best to only feed children meat broth, vegetable soup, porridge, and noodles that are easy to digest. This not only reduces the burden on the digestive system, but also helps the body's recovery.

(5) If the child still feels uncomfortable the next day and his hands and feet are still cold, parents can continue to use the above method to deal with it. After the child no longer has obvious discomfort, you can give him eels and well-stewed beef, which are very beneficial for strengthening his physical fitness.

(6) When children are feeling unwell, they can still eat Guyuan Paste, twice a day, half a spoonful each time. In summer, they should eat less.

2. When the child has obvious cold symptoms, but the hands and feet are not cold and the tongue is not white, parents should let the child drink more light salt water with a little salt, pinch the child's spine 10 to 15 times a day, let the child drink more warm water after pinching the spine, soak the child's feet at night to sweat, and then rub the soles of the feet 50 times to reduce the internal heat. Similarly, in this case, the child should rest early, eat a light diet, not eat fish or shrimp, and temporarily stop taking Guyuan Paste.

After the above treatment, the child’s early cold symptoms will be quickly controlled. As long as the child no longer catches cold, the discomfort will completely disappear within one or two days.

When babies are growing and developing and may not be able to express themselves yet, we parents should pay more attention to the details of life. If the baby catches a cold, it is best to find out the cause of the cold. Otherwise, if you just focus on seeing a doctor and taking medicine, but the cause is not found, the same problem will occur next time. As long as we can be careful enough, children will be less likely to get sick and suffer less pain.