What should I do when my baby has her first cold?

Where did the cold come from?

This was the question we kept coming back to, and it is almost always unanswerable. Cold viruses spread on hands and surfaces as much as through the air, the incubation period is a couple of days, and a baby who has been nowhere can still catch one from an adult who felt perfectly fine when they held her.

We spent a day working backwards through who had visited and what we had touched. It changed nothing. The useful version of that question is forward-looking — hands washed before she's picked up, nobody unwell holding her — not backwards into an investigation.

Knowing the arc made it much less frightening. Sneezing and a clear runny nose first. By the second or third day the mucus thickens and she sounds much worse, which is the part that makes you panic.

So the worst day is usually not the first day, and getting worse on day three is not the same as getting ill. We found it far easier once we stopped reassessing the whole situation every two hours and instead looked at where we were against that curve.

What helped her breathe and feed

A small baby breathes through her nose, so a blocked one shows up most at feeds. Saline drops soften things so she can clear them herself, and the timing that worked for us was just before a feed rather than at set intervals through the day.

We didn’t use suction that much, we were mostly using saline solution. Once or twice when it is genuinely blocking a feed is reasonable. Repeatedly, through the day, irritates the lining and leaves her more congested than she started.

Feeds get shorter and more frequent, because she has to stop and breathe. That is not a feeding problem to be solved, it is a nose problem showing up at the bottle.

We stopped tracking volumes and tracked wet nappies instead, which is the number that actually tells you whether she is getting enough. Smaller amounts more often, upright, with patience for the pauses, got us through it.

What we watched

The thermometer felt like the thing to reach for and it was the least useful piece of information we had. What mattered was her breathing and how she looked between the bad moments.

Breathing is the one to learn properly. Fast is common with a cold. Working hard is different — the skin pulling in under the ribs or at the base of the throat, nostrils flaring, a grunt at the end of each breath.

If she was born early