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Our baby currently has a cold which means her nose is streaming with snot. She is quite unhappy with us wiping it away with a tissue every few minutes. I can imagine her upper lip is getting quite sore.
What is the best, most comfortable, way to clear this snot away?
Some sort of basic nasal aspirator is what you are looking for. The one pictured in that article is very similar to the one that our hospital gave us as part of the newborn care package.
However, I have heard great things about Nosefrida's appropriately-named 'The Snotsucker'. It seems to address the issues we've had using the simple bulb, as it is much easier to clean, and apparently does not require sticking it up the child's nostril (our son absolutely hated that part).
My wife uses a combination of a nasal aspirator with a combination of nasal saline. Works like a charm with our baby. Just put the saline in, wait a few seconds, then suck.
I found that the bulb aspirator wasn't strong enough. We used an electric aspirator. They run around $20, so it is much more expensive than the bulb-style aspirator, but it worked much better. It makes a pretty loud motor noise, but that actually distracts our baby and stops her from crying.
The manual aspirators didn't work at all for us, so we switched to a vacuum cleaner attached model.
Yes it sounds horrible but they are perfectly safe.
I only know German models so here is one model with an English description on eBay.
From our experience they work very well but our daughter didn't like it at all but it was the only way to clear the nose and give her a good night's sleep.
Hold her near a sink with running water and extract the snot with wet fingers. This is especially useful before sleep time as it will ease her falling asleep.
Nosefrida FTW
http://www.amazon.com/Nosefrida-The-Snotsucker-Nasal-Aspirator/dp/B00171WXII
I know sucking snot seems gross, but it really provides you a lot of control. Plus there's a sponge in there protecting you from actually tasting baby snot (I'm sure we've all done worse as parents).
Squeeze the air out of a bulb of a "blue bulb syringe" to create a vacuum, then gently insert the rubber tip into one nostril. Another apparatus for this is a "nasal aspirator", a catheter-type device that uses the parent's sucking and a reservoir for mucus, which is more controlled.
