Ryan and his runny nose...

So my little man has a cold.

When he is awake he is in great spirits and plays without missing a beat. Besides the constant stream of snot flowing from his nose and the wet cough, he is his normal self. The problem is when he needs to take a nap or go to bed - he just can't sleep. He is so incredibly congested that he can't stay asleep for long without having a coughing attack that wakes him up. We have done everything his pediatrician recommends plus a few things that "are up to the parents".

For a cold, Ryan's pediatrician recommends using a humidifier, cleaning out his nose with a syringe/aspirator and to sleep on an incline. They do not recommend ANY types of cough syrups/rubs for children under two.

We have been doing all three mentioned above and Ryan is STILL miserable. We have his humidifier on full blast, we have sucked all the snot we can possibly get from his nose and we also have him laying on an incline but it still doesn't seem to help!

On a side note I would like to give major props to the Graco Nasal battery operated aspirator - it is amazing! Ryan loves it - he thinks it's funny and doesn't mind when we stick it up his nose. This may be gross (and it is) but you can see all the gunk you get from their noses in the clear plastic thingy. It kind of makes me want to puke, but I also get excited when I see it fill up because I know its only helping Ryan. 

Anyhow, like I said, none of this seems to help much when it's time to sleep.  He is so tired and wants to fall asleep so badly but he ends up coughing and waking himself up every 10 minutes.

When Kevin went to the store last night to grab some stuff for dinner he hit up the medicine aisle and came home with some Baby Vics Vapor Rub and some ZarBees cough syrup. It says on the package that it is safe for children 12 months +. Immediately I wondered why our pediatrician hadn't recommended this. It claims to be all natural - made from honey. I called the after hours nurse line and she basically told me that they cannot recommend anything besides what she had told me before.  The nurse on call said she had never heard of it and that it must be new because she was actually getting a lot of calls about it. Has anyone heard of this or used it?

I also asked about the Vics baby rub and she said they don't recommend that either because anything you rub on your babies skin is absorbed by their bodies. I told her the package said it was safe for babies 3 months and older! Ugh...talk about an unfulfilling call. I can't remember her exact words but it was basically that it was obviously most likely safe, they can't recommend it, but that "its up to the parents". She said there were a lot of things that are "all natural" that parents ask about and/or that some parents swear by, but that they can't technically recommended - which to me sounded like "It's fine, try it, see if it works...if not, it's no harm." I hope I'm not crazy in understanding that from our call...

Anyhow, Ryan was so miserable and trying to pass out that we ended up rubbing his chest with the vapor rub (It is a non-medicated formula with soothing aloe vera and fragrances of eucalyptus, rosemary and lavender) and only half the recommended dosage of the ZarBees syrup. It worked like a charm. He slept from 6:45pm until 7:30am (thats with the time change)....so almost 13 hours! We had to check on him a few times to make sure he was ok since he was sleeping so soundly.

So even though we ended up using it I am scared I am gong to see some crazy report on how this stuff isn't actually all natural or something is wrong with it.  I have tried looking for reviews online but can't seem to find any. I realize that there was a ton of testing done for it to even make it on the market but I guess you just question everything as a parent. Does anyone have any experience with it? Does anyones pediatricians have thoughts on it? Good or bad I would love to hear!