Father and Sons

Lately, Matthew has been experiencing nosebleeds. Some says that this is caused by the weather change. I didn’t worry much because I know that Matt is just playing with his nose that’s why it bled… playing or picking his nose.

I did a quick search on Google to look for some common causes of this toddler nosebleeds and here is what I found out..

1. The most common reason for nosebleeds are a cold or allergy
2. Trauma can be another cause of nosebleeds
3. And finally, in our case, it was caused by Matt himself by frequently touching his nose.

When nosebleeds occur there is a proper way in attending to this situation. When a nose bleed occurs:

1. The first thing to do when nosebleed occurs is to tilt the head slightly back and preferably keep the child upright either standing or in a chair. Keeping the head higher than the heart will decrease the amount of blood pooling that can occur in tissues that have a lot of blood vessels in it such as the nose.
2. Just like in any wound, the right way to stop bleeding is to apply pressure in the wound. You want to stop the bleeding by applying pressure to the site of bleeding. Pinch about halfway up the nose where the bone and cartilage meet. If pressure is applied only at the opening of the nose, you catch a lot of blood, but do not apply pressure in the correct spot.
3. Keep pressure on the nose for at least 10 minutes, and NO peeking. This is where most adults fail because 10 minutes can be a long time to hold pressure to the nose. It is difficult to resist the urge to “peek” just to see if the bleeding has stopped. Each time this “peeking” is done, the clot that was forming inside the nose gets ripped away, and bleeding may start all over giving the appearance of abnormal bleeding.