Why did milk come out of my baby's nose?

A bit of milk came out of her nose

She was asleep. It came out of her nose. Our message was short and sent immediately.

It is a genuinely horrible thing to watch. It looks like choking, or drowning, or something having gone badly wrong in a way you can't fix.

It's mostly plumbing

The mouth and the nasal passages meet at the back of the throat. When milk comes back up it sometimes takes the nasal route instead of the oral one. Small babies do this. It looks far worse than it is.

Knowing that in advance wouldn't have stopped the jolt, but it would have shortened the twenty minutes afterwards where we sat watching her chest go up and down.

What we'd do again

Pick her up, upright, where we could see her face. Wipe the outside of her nose gently — not poke about, not try to suction it out.

Watch her breathing and her colour for a minute or two until she was clearly fine. Then straight back down, flat, on her back.

That last part was the hardest. The urge to raise the mattress after seeing milk come through your baby’s nose is enormous. We did prop ours and it seemed to help, but we later learned that the safer general guidance is to keep it flat. It is one of those things that made complete sense to us at the time, but we would not do again without a specific plan from Ari’s doctor or nurse.

Where it stops being a story you tell later

One episode, with a baby who recovers straight away and carries on as normal, is a story.

If milk comes through your baby’s nose during most feeds, mention it to your baby’s doctor or nurse. It may be linked to reflux or the way your baby is feeding, and it is worth having someone look properly.

And anything with real breathing difficulty, persistent choking, a colour change, or a baby who doesn't recover quickly is not a wait-and-see. We did an infant first aid session before she came home and never needed it, which is the best possible outcome for an evening spent learning something.