Just a Spoonful of Sugar...

[or oatmeal or rice] helps the medicine go down in the most delightful way (think Mary Poppins).

Dennis and I have a horrible track record of getting medicine into Eddie. Our first experience beyond tylenol was with the chicken pox and it's gone downhill since. When we are able to actually get it into his mouth he either spits it out, or if he swallows, it causes him to gag and he throws it up, along with whatever else was in his stomach in spectacular fashion. We've tried putting it in various drinks, which worked for a little while with certain meds, but his sensitive palette seems to be able to discern that something tastes different.

So you can imagine our anxiety when we HAD to give him antibiotics. Yesterday the nanny shows up right in time for Eddie's next dose. As I'm getting ready to add it to his oatmeal, she says she can get him to take the meds straight from the dropper. After a bit of convincing, I agree to let her try, but warning her of the potential outcome. I thought she would sit in our kitchen and try (given the high likelihood for a mess). But no, she goes into the living room, sits on our couch, over top the beautiful oriental rug that has had coffee, beer, formula and whatever else on it, but never the pink stuff of amoxicillin.

I was getting nervous. Yet, in just about one fell swoop, before I knew what hit me, she had the entire teaspoon of meds in Eddie and he wasn't even fussing about it. I wonder if I could pay her to come each day to do this for me? You see, our method of putting it in rice or oatmeal works fine, but is a bit like having all the stars and planets aligned. Once you add it to the cereal, he has to eat all the cereal, or not ingest the full dose and there's no way of knowing exactly how much he's had. We've resorted to all sorts of antics to get him to polish off a small bowl of cereal and he's allowed to do stuff we would never otherwsise allow him to do, just to keep that mouth opening.