What brand and type of humidifier is good to use in a baby's room?
Where can you buy one? And how long/often should they be used?
3 Answers
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We have a Vicks vaporizer and a CVS brand vaporizer (same as Vicks but cheaper). These are what were available at our local drug store when our kids were sick and we're happy with them (the list price of $15 at Amazon is cheaper than what we'd paid).
We like the "vaporizers" because they make a warm, wet mist that feels more humid and helpful than the cool mist of a "humidifier". It's the experience that my husband and I both remember from our childhood - standing over the humidifier and taking a deep breath.
**Warning: Today's pediatricians recommend cool mist humidifiers (instead of vaporizer) because they are unlikely to cause a burn/scald. We chose not to worry about this.
I happened to see a much cuter humidifier by Crane online recently, and it has some good reviews.
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I prefer the cool mist type of humidifier mainly for safety -- no hot steam or elements. To steve's comment "At 2.5 years old, I'm fairly certain that our toddler is smart enough not to burn himself" -- I said something similar for my then 3 yr old daughter regarding touching the gas fireplace glass front... at some point later she ended up inadvertently touching it and going to the doctors for her burn. Accidents do happen.
The style of cool mist humidifier we got has a good size water capacity, good size humidifying capability and a removeable, viewable water tank. The warm mist ones we tried typically had a moderate size tank with a small opening for the heating element. The removable, easy access tank made it a good deal easier to clean out (Probably should have cleaned out more often than I did to keep mold and bacteria growth in check). Also, I've gotten zapped by the heat of the more inexpensive, blow molded warm mist vaporizers -- typically when removing the heating element to check the water level or add water.
We stayed away from the cutsie one (e.g., pigs or ducks) since they seemed to have a smaller capacity (less vapor and less water storage), seemed to be paying extra for its' look and we sometimes use it in non-kids room -- though the thought of my wife laying sick in our room with a vaporizer pig blowing steam out it's snout is rather funny.
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We have a Holmes warm steam machine in our son's room. It's sitting on the floor on a piece of round cork board. It's only turned on at night after he's in the crib. We've been using it every night since we got it and it's made a difference.
It does need to be cleaned on a fairly regular basis. I didn't read that instruction when we first got it and it started to display the "done" setting as soon as we turned it on. Turned out that the heat mechanism was covered in the minerals that get left behind when the water evaporates. Took some serious elbow grease to chip all that away and it works fine again. Emptying out the tray is really easy.
He is curious about it and does sometimes crawl over to check it out. So far, he reaches out to touch it but can be distracted or instructed "no."
Likely, you're only using the humidifer at right, and if your child is still in a crib (and can't climb out) then you should be just fine with a warm-steam vaporizer. On the other end of the spectrum, At 2.5 years old, I'm fairly certain that our toddler is smart enough not to burn himself.
- Steve Lacy, Jan 14, 2010