Home remedies · Children & infants
No home remedy here replaces treatment, and none is talked down. What has done good for generations does good — even if no one ever measured it. Where something is well studied, it says so. Where it is only experience, it says that too.
Pick the child up calmly, go to an open window or outside, hold it upright, speak calmly.
Cool, moist air and above all calm relax the larynx. Agitation worsens the narrowing — so your own calm is part of the treatment.
It does not replace medication with marked croup — the effect often lasts only for the moment.
Call emergency services at once with breathlessness at rest, audible wheeze on breathing in, indrawing between the ribs, pale or blue lips, or when the child can no longer speak.
At once: any fever in an infant under three months, a child who is apathetic or has stopped drinking, skin bleeding that does not fade under pressure, breathlessness or drawn-in ribs. A first seizure is always looked at. Refusing to drink for hours counts for more than the temperature.