Asthma In Toddler

Just wondering if anyone has any experiences with toddlers and asthma. DD2 has a horrific cough early in the morning(when it cools down), and DH said he thinks it's asthma- coupled with her breathing (which I haven't heard because DH gets up to her). He has asthma himself, so is basing it on that.
We have a Dr's appt tomorrow already for her needles, so am wanting to get all info I can off him whilst there.
Is there a test for it? IS she too young for the test (18 month)? What else can I ask?

TIA

Alot of kids develop infantile asthma, my son has it...... and he started around 2 also. It always starts with a cough and then the wheezing starts.

Im not sure if there are tests that can be done, i just know that Lukas has 2 puffers, including a preventative that i give him as soon as the coughing starts regardless of is hes wheezy.

Just ask the dr as much as u can , he or she will be full of infor for u


asthma sucks but if u manage it straight away it should be ok and kids do outgrow it smile

My DS2, who will be turning 3 next month, has asthma. He was sick a lot as a baby, very prone to chest infections and breathing problems. He was too young then to diagnose with asthma; generally doctors say they can't be properly diagnosed before the age of 2. My DH also has asthma, and that definitely increases their chances of having it.

What happened for my boy was, he was referred to a paediatrician to manage his issues, she did a lot of testing and found that he has allergies (they can blood test for that). His allergies are quite severe, it's dust mite and pollens and that sort of thing (inhalants). He was about 10 months old at that time. She put him on prescription medication to manage that, which he needs every day, and also ventolin, for times when he wasn't breathing well. By the time he was 18 months old, he was requiring ventolin at least 4 times a day, every day, and his paed made a diagnosis of asthma, and put him on a preventer. He's improved a lot with the preventer; it took a while to get the dose right, he's on an adult dose now (it's not uncommon for kids to need a stronger preventer) but he's finally under control and not needing the ventolin every day. He has the preventer every day, morning and night. We have an asthma management plan and he's still under a specialist.

It's not a nice thing to have to deal with, they can get so sick with it and just seeing them unable to breathe is horrible. The important thing is getting a plan sorted out, and getting all the information from your doctor, so that you know exactly what to do in any situation. I was always so nervous in the early days because I wasn't sure what to do, I mean I knew when he needed ventolin but I didn't know when it was bad enough that he should see a doctor, or go to hospital; I just wasn't confident in dealing with it. Now I feel more confident.

Good luck with it, I hope she doesn't have it, but if she does then it's good that you're getting it checked out now.

My 4 year old has whats commonly called exercise induced asthma, (since 2) although most doctors wont diagnose it until they are much older.

As soon as it gets cold around 4 in the afternoon and if shes been running around she will starting coughing, which sounds more like barking. She finds it very hard to stop coughing. She has a puffer which stops the coughing in a few minutes. She can also get bouts of asthma when she has a cold or flu as soon as she lies down at night to go to sleep she starts coughing, again the puffer helps straight away.

Luckily I knew what to look for when my 1 year old started coughing and had really laboured breathing, we spent the night in hospital and again
they know that its asthma because the puffer worked but they wont diagnose it.

Asthma is in my family and the kids that have had it have all grown out of it. Which is really positive.

My Daughter has been unofficially diagnosed with Asthma too. (They say they will officiall diagnose her if she still has symptoms post age 4, Currently 2.5yrs). The advice I have been given is to keep her warm overnights/mornings by using singlets under her clothes. Also apparently a cause for a lot of Asthma attacks is male cats! apparently there is something in there hormones that trigger astma attacks so if you have an indoor male cat, maybe try (slowly) to encourage him to become an outdoor one?

DS3 is asthmatic... he hasn't had any official testing or anything but the dr has said yes...

he had bronchiolitis at age 3mths and from then on has an average of 7-10 chest infections per year... mostly during winter... he is on a preventar which we have found we only need to use during the cooler months not so much over summer and ventolin as needed...

he also has many allergies which according to an initial blood test he has hundreds though the dr doesn't want to do further testing as we may never find out what they all are and it was very stressful for him for the one blood test.. he fainted during it... we know from the test he has severe egg allergy and by a reaction to licking a peanut that it will be a severe allergy as well... everything else seems to be mild eg: excema plays up, gets the snotty, snuffly nose, goes red around eyes etc.... but at this stage aren't life threatening...

Thanks so much ladies. A lot of your experiences are sounding like DD2, so am feeling like this is what's coming sad. She gets sick often and the barking cough- sounds horrible. She also seems to be developing mild excema on her face. She seems to get every problem in the world!
FX the doctor has enough time to chat- or we make a follow up appt. He's a great doc and hard to get into!
I appreciate all your replies- thanks smile

I've just copied and pasted my reply from another thread because it is about asthma and i can't be bothered typing today LOL

Sounds a bit like my dd, she has an on going cough for ages and after it didn't clear up took her to the doctors and he thought asthma too and gave her i think it's called predmix it went away and she was fine for a few months and then a couple weeks ago started wheezing and had a slight asthma attack got put back on predmix and has ventilon now if she starts wheezing, we've only used it once since her attack.