Habitual waking post illness

[LaraAndrea]

My little girl is just shy of 14months and has been sick on and off since she started daycare at 12 months.

Her most recent illness has gone but left her with an awful reactive cough. Once she gets going, it can take some time for her to stop.

Of course it is the worst at night. She will wake and cough and cough. Prior to illness or teething, if she would wake, she would quickly settle on her own, the coughing does not allow for that.

For the last few days the night time coughing has been habitual?? At 11:10 and 3:00AM. I am unsure if she is waking b/c of cough or coughing b/c she is awake. I am not sure why she is waking, but it has been consistent the past few days.

Her routine hasn't changed much due to daycare schedule:

6:00 wake/BF
730 breakfast
830 snack at daycare
11:00 lunch
11:45-2:00 nap, snack/milk after waking
3:30 snack
5:30 dinner
7:00 BF/BT

I am not sure if the main issue is her health (coughing), or the habitual wakes.

Should we be doing wake to sleep to address the habitual waking??

Other thoughts?

[MummyMoo17]

Sorry to hear about your poorly LO.

Have you tried a humidifier in her room or something to up the moisture level to see if that helps the cough? It can get quite dry overnight which might not help her.

Could you give a little more detail - you don't mention how are you settling her back to sleep with her wake ups in the below? x

[LaraAndrea]

We have a humidifier going her crib raised slightly (although her cough is not a productive one now, so that may be moot), she has inhaler from Dr. Which helped some.

Normally she settles herself, but with the cough, I go in after awhile, usually to offer water. She usually pushes the water away and starts fussing/crying (we in some ways make it worse when we intervene, but I can't stand letting her cough like that for so long), once the crying stops I usually rub her tummy or back for a couple mins and she settles. I really think she is tried from coughing and crying that she goes to sleep. I think when we intervene we distract her from coughing.

[LaraAndrea]

The wake to sleep helped with the habitual wakes/coughing fits... But now we have early waking, she generally falls back asleep eventually (unless she starts coughing). But she seems to be more restlessness at night, more moving around etc.

I am not sure if this long term coughing has lead to some OT, but it seems like a tough cycle to break when the coughing is unpredictable.