[elc]

With an 18 month old, we’ve found OTC medicines don’t work for stuffy nose. Nothing works for that but steamy showers. Lord knows you’ll never get a suction up her nose.

But when she had a horrendous cold last week, the only thing that helped stop her coughing when she laid down was OTC cough medicine. We tried putting her on an incline. We sat in the shower until the hot water ran out (water restrictions be damned). And I let her sleep on my shoulder for as long as I could stay awake.

But in the end, the cough medicine saved us all.

On another note, I can easily see how one would accidentally give their child too much. We went through it last week, trying to get her to take the medicine. Inevitably, she would spit some out and we would go back and forth about whether we should give her a bit more. Very nerve racking because we’ve known about these warnings for a year now.

[Calpernia]

The steam and sleeping on the shoulder always worked on mine. I had a recline chair I spent many of nights in.

[Hardastarboard]

When I posted about OTC cough medicine, I meant the most common type, dextromethorphan. My wife and I have taken it many times. It never helped either of us to speak of, and recent research also shows that it's not effective.

If you're talking about Triaminic, or any cough medicine that uses an antihistamine to supress the cough (Benadryl cough medicine, for instance), I can't say about that. It may be quite effective for all I know.