Yesterday, we celebrated the final doses of antibiotics! Both Ben and Elena had coughs turn into double ear infections with fevers. They were put on antibiotics for 10 days... though it felt like 10 weeks!
Benjamin was a champ. He didn't appreciate having this syringe stuck in his mouth, but it was the yummy, bubble gum stuff, so he took it and moved on with his life. Elena even watched day after day as he calmly took his medicine and joined with me in saying, "Good boy, Ben!" But did this change her view of her medicine? Absolutely not!
I should say at this point that Elena did not have the yummy, bubble gum stuff, she is allergic. Her medication was just as yummy and sweet though (at least it smelled sweet), just white instead of pink. The first day, Elena would have nothing to do with the syringe of medicine. I tried putting it in a small half glass of milk. She sipped about 1/4 of it, then spilled half and didn't want to drink the rest. Then I tried more in a full sippy cup of milk (thinking maybe more milk would mask the flavor of the medicine), no luck. One sip and she was done. I then went to the internet for ideas.
I came across a tip that suggested a spoonful of hersey's chocolate chaser (which I never tried because this would require her to first acknowledge and ingest her medicine), another suggested mixing it in with a spoonful of applesauce. This website said not to lie to your child, "Don't tell them it's just applesauce because they will get one lick or scent of it and know it's not true. Your child needs to understand the importance of taking their medicine, and must learn to do so. Tell them the applesauce is helping them take their medicine (stick to just a spoonful, the more you add the more your child needs to finish to complete the dose)"
First of all, to tell her that her medicine is in that applesauce ensures that it will go nowhere near her lips. Second, her dose of 4 ml takes up the whole spoon, so it looks like chunks have curtled in this white spoonful. With 5 more spoonfuls of applesauce, it still looks disgusting and white , so this route didn't work either.
We tried another sippy of milk, which she did not want to finish (either because it tasted weird with medicine or because her appetite was low and she didn't want milk), but after bribing with candy, threatening to turn off "Little Einsteins", and warning of the alternative (forcing the medicine with the syringe), she eventually sipped her way through most of it.
They still had fevers at this point, so we wanted to give them both a dose of Tylenol. Again, Ben did fine. We decided we needed to make her take the syringe this time; if she would try it, she would see that it tasted good. Neither of us wanted to hold her down and force it, that wouldn't give her a better impression of this syringe, so we thought we could reason with her and wait her out (who's got the last laugh now?). Eventually, Ben and I went to bed. Sean stayed up with her for 2 more hours trying to get her to take it on her own, trying to get her comfortable with the syringe with water, which she eventually came around to. Unfortunately, she never came around to the idea of the medicine, so after 2-3 hours of patiently waiting, Sean had to hold her down and make her take it.
I should also mention at this point that Elena's doctor prescribed 1 dose per day, but the pharmacy printed 2 doses per day on her medicine, so we had quite a bit of medicine to work with (and inevitably waste). When we finished the course of antibiotics, we were completely out. I thought it odd that we had wasted 1/2 the bottle of medicine trying to get her to take it, but now I see what happened; there were 60ml in the bottle, her dose was 4 ml once a day, if we had proceeded with 2 doses a day for 10 days, she would need 80 ml. So, we only wasted 20ml. I would have been thoroughly annoyed if we did what the bottle said, but were not given enough to finish out the course. Well anyway, back to Elena...
Luckily, the next day we stumbled across a special food to hide the medicine in... STRAWBERRY YOGURT! This was the right color, consistency, and sweetness to mask the medicine. I put a little in a bowl for me too and we shared the yogurt (this was the only way to make sure she ate it all, which was only 2 spoonfuls worth), we would clink spoons and say, "Cheers!" I would also help her scrape the bowl clean. The few days that she didn't want yogurt, we were able to get it in her milk, so we never had another day like the first.
From now on, when I hear, "A spoonful of sugar (or applesauce) helps the medicine go down" ... I'll say, "LIES!"
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