Monday, 19 November 2012

Snot Sucker

What's worse than a baby screaming in your ear?  Two babies screaming in my ear!  Not that I don't deserve it.  Both my babies should be quite upset with me.  You see, I gave them their first ever cold.  Babies up to 4 months old are strictly nose breathers.  This allows them to successfully breast feed and continue breathing at the same time.

My girls have looked so sad the last few days; their big eyes staring at me, just begging me to make it all go away.  It honestly makes me feel completely helpless, especially knowing that there is very little I can do to make them feel better...if only there was some way to just draw the mucus out of there sinus cavity, I'd gladly do it.

I read a statistic that stated babies will get, on average, 8 colds a year, probably from licking doorknobs (Note...do not google this because apparently it's a thing in Japan).  Luckily there are a plethora of products out there to help a daddy out when the snot hits the fan.

First, if your baby is suffering from a stuffed up nose, loosening everything up for quick removal is the first course of action.  You can either purchase, or DIY, a saline solution that will be dropped into each of your baby's nostrils.  The purchased version, the brand we used anyway, is called hydraSense Easydose.  It's basically a number of single application squeeze bottles filled with undiluted isotonic desalinated seawater.  Trying to get the little tube in my child's nose without touching her brain was difficult enough, but add in having to squeeze a single drop of liquid from a fragile plastic tube and you've actually got an event where it's appropriate for your wife to yell "You're drowning her!".  This stuff works pretty well, even at dosages much higher than a single drop...

Step two, is where the fun really starts.  There are actually several products out there specifically designed to literally suck the snot out of your child's head.  We have two versions, a bulb aspirator, as well as a Belvital Baby Nose Cleaner.  We started with the bulb aspirator, but were not really confident in the results.  Basically it's a little squeeze bulb with a tube sticking out of it.  You squeeze the bulb then insert the tube into your baby's nostril.  When you release the bulb, the vacuum created will draw the mucus through.  After the first time I used this device, I excitedly looked inside the reservoir , but was disappointed not to find it filled to the brim with roiling green slime.  In fact, there wasn't really anything in there at all.  Was it even working?  My baby still had her cold, so it wasn't the miracle cure I was hoping for. 

On to product number two...the photo on the front of the Belvital Baby Nose Cleaner is awesome.  There's this little kid, all smiles, with a clear plastic tube jammed up his nose.  On the backside of the tube is a long clear plastic hose, and the other end of that long clear plastic hose, snakes it's way in to the mouth of smiling woman.  Everyone is smiling, everyone is having a great time...It's important to actually read the directions for assembling this product.  If I had, then I would have found out that you stuff a small amount of cotton, to act as a filter, at the joint between the hose and the tube.  Reading the instructions wouldn't have prevented my wife from making gagging sounds when the snot bubbled and oozed it's way through the clear, so you can see it really works, tube, but it probably would have prevented me from being able to accurately describe the taste a baby boogers.


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