Albuterol and sleep

My son is 10 and 1/2 months old. He was recently diagnosed with viral rhinitis (runny nose) and bronchiolitis. He was given and antibiotic and albuterol liquid. I was hesitant to administer the medicine because I had a negative experience with giving it to my daughter when she was a infant. She became extremely hyper and gained weight at a remarkable speed. You could tell she was on steroids obviously. My son seems to be having night terrors or something. Yes we are still working on the sleep all night pattern. But since he has been taking the albuterol, it has been horrible. We were told by friends to just let him cry at night. Originally he would cry himself to sleep and it would be short lived and bearable for us. Now on the medicine he awakes screaming at the top of his lungs. If you put your hand on his chest, his heart is beating so fast and his breathing is rapid. I haven't given the medicine consistently because of my fears. I am a nurse and I only give it to him if symptoms are present. If a listen with my stethescope and hear wheezing or feel as if he is forcing air out during expiration, I'll give a dose at night. I hate this drug for young ones! It seems like more harm than good. I think me and my son's doctor will have to have a long talk and come up with another plan. The money shouldn't drive you! My 1st born is now 14. As she remained on the med even to this day, I have still not liked it. Now she dances quite a bit and uses her inhaler maybe 1-3 times per month. When she was around 10 or 11 she was very chubby as a result of the steroid use, despite being physically active. @ age 10 she wore a womens 16. It took many years and limited use of the drug to get the weight off. If there are other options discuss them with you physician and get your kid off this drug. It seems dangerous to me!

My son had croup and bronchitis, he was prescribed the albuterol 1 full vile 3 times a day for the 1st 3 days then 2 viles for 2 days each day then on the last day just 1 vile. I was advised by the pharmacist that it might make by 5 month old a little shaky. NOT THE DOCTOR which i think she should have told me something about the side affects of a 5 month old. I had never heard of this stuff or what it was for all i knew is it was a breathing treatment. I finished giving my baby the 6 days of albuterol and now that today is the last day he took it I cant seem to calm him in any way, he cant go to sleep, all he does is cry, he wont eat, he's always irritated, restless and IF i can get him to nap, its about 10-20 mins. its AWFUL to see my baby act like this, sometimes when i gave him the treatment and i was holding him i would end up inhaling the albuterol since he was sitting right in front of me i would feel hot flashed ( mind you i would inhale VERY little) i would also feel dizziness hours after inhaling it. however i never noticed it and never paid attention to it. not till today that i noticed my childs behavior did i decide to investigate this stuff. I will NEVER give this to my baby again. I should have been advised about all this however i was not. also my fault as a mother i should have investigated it before i gave it to my child as i trusted the doctor. =(

4 yr. old son on Albuterol and Pulmicort for asthma triggered by allergies and colds. He is off of both during the summer, once he goes on the medication for the allergy season he experiences mood swings, violent tantrums, is confrontational, basically his personality changes. We have tried reducing the dose and cutting out one medication or the other with the same effect, the symptoms persist. We feel we have no choice because of the severe asthma attacks.

This post is in regard to a form of albuterol known as "Xopenex" or levalalbuterol. From what I've read, many pediatricians are using this instead of Albuterol for infants and young children. It's the drug of choice because it supposedly has no side effects. This may be the case for most children BUT not my three year old daughter. Her pediatrician prescribed nebulizer treatments of xopenex and pulmicort, twice a day for six weeks. We managed to stick with it for four-five days- It was a nightmare! My daughter wouldn't eat (and this is a child who isn't a picky eater at all) or drink much at all and went for 12 hours one day without urinating. She was so horribly moody that you couldn't stand to be around her. She cried and screamed about everything and she is normally a very cooperative and happy-go-lucky kid. She also became aggressive towards me and others which was also very unlike her. The worst part was at night. She would have horrible screaming fits when it was time to go to bed. When she finally fell asleep, she would jerk and twitch most of the night. Several times she woke up after sleeping for about three hours, screaming at the top of her lungs. I would try to console her and she would yell louder and pull away from me. If I tried to touch her, she would swing at me as hard as she could. She seemed terrified of me and my husband. It would take me forever to get her calmed down enough to go back to sleep. If someone had videotaped these episodes, blocking out her face, NO ONE could ever have convinced me that this was my little girl. Her personality was so changed that I wanted to cry. I knew what it was doing to me to watch her and I couldn't imagine what was going on in her little head. I called my pediatrician and she brushed off my concerns. She said "Three year olds have temper tantrums." I told her that I understand that but not usually at three thirty in the morning. I took my daughter to MY doctor and he said he thought it could most certainly be the drugs. He suggested that we use the pulmicort alone one night and the xopenex alone the next night. We were surprised to see that she had reactions to both the drugs. One night she tossed, turned and twitched and the next she woke up in a terror. We stopped both medicines and ALL the symptoms ended. She will NEVER use these medicines again unless there are no other options! And we will not be back to our pediatrician!

I use the albuterol and ipratropium bromide vials with my nebulizer machine and experience the following......
Uncontrollable muscle spasms in hands and feet, heart races and palpitations,sometimes my throat is sore or even a slight burning sensation in the back of my throat from usage,my tongue burns and I have gotten little white bumps that are sore on it like you get when you have had too much salt,irritability,sleep loss,chills,etc. Works great at keeping my lungs open to breath tho! I read tho, that it can "cause" you to get COPD? Is there any truth to this?