Diff b/t Croup & Regular Cold w/cough?

[ha98ed14]

What's the difference between croup and a regular cold with a cough? For the past two days, DD has had a seal bark cough upon waking up. Today she is congested, but the cough goes away w/in and half our of getting up. But she otherwise seems fine. No fever. No runny nose. No complaining of not feeling well. Yesterday I kept her home, but I think I could have sent her to school and she would have been ok... Thoughts?

[happy2bamom]

In our experience, croup is much worse at night ( and sometimes we only hear the cough at night). If the cough really sounds barky you may want to go to the peds and have her lungs listened to. For us, once the barky cough starts it is typically followed with some wheezing so we try to get DS on a steroid ASAP.

[vludmilla]

Is there any chance the cough is caused by post nasal drip? I find that kind of cough sounds like a "bark" also.

[o_mom]

Croup is the barky seal cough. Croup is a symptom, like runny nose, watery eyes, etc. and not a disease, really. You can have a cold with croup or a cold with just a regular cough. Dr. Sears has a good page on croup: http://www.askdrsears.com/topics/chi...llnesses/croup

For us, the croupy cough usually proceeds the rest of the cold symptoms by a day or so and usually isn't related to how bad the cold is (we have had relatively mild colds with bad croup symptoms and bad colds with mild croup). It's usually no more contagious than a regular cold.

[daisymommy]

Deleted due to my own incorrect info

[nfowife]

IME, croup cough has a very distinct sound- I've literally thought a dog was barking outside at night when it was DD upstairs. It was mostly at night. We found our ped was willing to prescribe a steroid and it worked well to clear it up quickly.