Hello and Welcome to 'Ask A Doctor' service. I have reviewed your query and here is my advice.
Has your daughter ever had
choking and gagging episodes before? Sometimes when the healthcare worker asks a healthy child to open his/her mouth the child will open the mouth so widely that the
epiglottis is seen. These patients are not sick.
If she is up-to-date with her routine childhood immunizations, then she is protected against her epiglottis being infected because the most common bacterial cause of epiglottis is covered by the vaccines that she received when younger.
Infection of the epiglottis is life threatening. The child refuses to lie down,
drooling, may be coughing and having
difficulty breathing.
A possible cause of cough when laying down and no cough when upright is gastroesophageal reflux. In which stomach contents come back up the
esophagus into the throat causing the child to cough.
Hope I have answered your query. Let me know if I can assist you further.
Arnold Zedd, MD, FAAP