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Dec. 19th, 2004 09:29 amWell, it's official...I am no longer the sickest member of my family. I am actually feeling better this morning, while the rest of them are measurably worse.
There's nothing I can do to help them, not really. I'm here if they need cuddles, but really everyone just seems to want to be left alone right now. (Unlike when I was in the throes of the worst of the illness, when everyone seemed to need something. Part of the whole mom gig, I guess.)
In the middle of the night, the two-year-old woke up crying. I went in to check on her, and she was unbearably hot. I didn't officially take her temperature (that would require both finding and using the thermometer, neither of which is an easy task in our household) but her entire body was extremely hot, not just her forehead/face, which is a sure sign of an edging-into-scary-territory kind of fever.
I took her into the kitchen, held her (squirming and saying 'No!') across my lap, took the oral syringe full of children's Advil and confidently stuck it into her mouth, squirting the contents into the side of her mouth, toward the back.
My efforts were promptly rewarded by her spitting the entire mess out. Sticky purple goo dribbled onto her chin, my hands, her face...everywhere, really.
I loaded up the syringe, determined to try again. This time, she clenched her teeth tightly together and shook her head in anticipation. I pushed the syringe in her mouth again, circumvented the teeth, squeezed the contents in again, and, of course, had them all promptly spit out across my hands again.
Now, I still had an extremely feverish little girl. But now she was also covered in what basically amounts to two teaspoonfuls of purple syrup. Believe me, it sounds like less than it feels. And while I might have been stupid enought to try the same ineffective tactic twice, trying for a third time seemed insane. So it was time for a bath.
I stopped to wash my hands, paged a friend who was online to say "Please find me a web site that explains how to give a child medicine who doesn't want to take it," and headed to the bathroom, said child in tow.
She tolerated the bath better, and it did seem to bring her body temperature down, but it seemed like a temporary solution at best. I didn't think I could keep bathing her all night.
By this time D had woken up. He's usually a light sleeper, but this time he managed to sleep through all of the intense crying and screaming, waking up only after she had calmed down and was in the bath, moaning slightly but pitifully. He looked at me oddly when I expressed concern about giving her the medicine, saying something along the lines of, "Well, we got it to work before."
Oh, but she's onto us, buddy..., I thought. Instead I said, "I've tried giving it to her twice, and both times she spit all of it out." He continued to look at me as if I just hadn't been doing this properly. Umm, okay. Maybe it will be easier with two of us.
So, I held her while she fought; fought me kicking, yelling, screaming, and crying. I felt guilty, sure she'd relive this moment in therapy years later. D held the syringe and put the medicine in her mouth. His technique was to put little amounts of the medicine in her mouth at a time. This worked slightly better, but only because as she spit it out I caught the dribbles and pushed them back into her mouth with my finger. I kept doing this until either she would give up and swallow it or I would miss, both occurring with relatively the same frequency. Then D put a little more of the stuff in her mouth and the whole process started over.
We did this with two syringefuls, optimistically guessing that about half of each one actually made it into her stomach (the syringe is 1 tsp, the amount she's supposed to take). In the end, both Dave and I were alternately trying to push purplestuff into her mouth, and we had sticky stuff all over all of us.
We washed our hands and arms, wiped her down with warm water on paper towels. She was still a little sticky, but no matter. I ended up nursing her back to sleep.
The online solution was to use an oral syringe for reluctant medicine takers. Well, okay. There was also stuff about trying various flavors and brands, which, while logical, didn't seem entirely practical at one in the morning.
But there *has* to be an easier way to give medicine to a balky two-year-old, right?
A+
There's nothing I can do to help them, not really. I'm here if they need cuddles, but really everyone just seems to want to be left alone right now. (Unlike when I was in the throes of the worst of the illness, when everyone seemed to need something. Part of the whole mom gig, I guess.)
In the middle of the night, the two-year-old woke up crying. I went in to check on her, and she was unbearably hot. I didn't officially take her temperature (that would require both finding and using the thermometer, neither of which is an easy task in our household) but her entire body was extremely hot, not just her forehead/face, which is a sure sign of an edging-into-scary-territory kind of fever.
I took her into the kitchen, held her (squirming and saying 'No!') across my lap, took the oral syringe full of children's Advil and confidently stuck it into her mouth, squirting the contents into the side of her mouth, toward the back.
My efforts were promptly rewarded by her spitting the entire mess out. Sticky purple goo dribbled onto her chin, my hands, her face...everywhere, really.
I loaded up the syringe, determined to try again. This time, she clenched her teeth tightly together and shook her head in anticipation. I pushed the syringe in her mouth again, circumvented the teeth, squeezed the contents in again, and, of course, had them all promptly spit out across my hands again.
Now, I still had an extremely feverish little girl. But now she was also covered in what basically amounts to two teaspoonfuls of purple syrup. Believe me, it sounds like less than it feels. And while I might have been stupid enought to try the same ineffective tactic twice, trying for a third time seemed insane. So it was time for a bath.
I stopped to wash my hands, paged a friend who was online to say "Please find me a web site that explains how to give a child medicine who doesn't want to take it," and headed to the bathroom, said child in tow.
She tolerated the bath better, and it did seem to bring her body temperature down, but it seemed like a temporary solution at best. I didn't think I could keep bathing her all night.
By this time D had woken up. He's usually a light sleeper, but this time he managed to sleep through all of the intense crying and screaming, waking up only after she had calmed down and was in the bath, moaning slightly but pitifully. He looked at me oddly when I expressed concern about giving her the medicine, saying something along the lines of, "Well, we got it to work before."
Oh, but she's onto us, buddy..., I thought. Instead I said, "I've tried giving it to her twice, and both times she spit all of it out." He continued to look at me as if I just hadn't been doing this properly. Umm, okay. Maybe it will be easier with two of us.
So, I held her while she fought; fought me kicking, yelling, screaming, and crying. I felt guilty, sure she'd relive this moment in therapy years later. D held the syringe and put the medicine in her mouth. His technique was to put little amounts of the medicine in her mouth at a time. This worked slightly better, but only because as she spit it out I caught the dribbles and pushed them back into her mouth with my finger. I kept doing this until either she would give up and swallow it or I would miss, both occurring with relatively the same frequency. Then D put a little more of the stuff in her mouth and the whole process started over.
We did this with two syringefuls, optimistically guessing that about half of each one actually made it into her stomach (the syringe is 1 tsp, the amount she's supposed to take). In the end, both Dave and I were alternately trying to push purplestuff into her mouth, and we had sticky stuff all over all of us.
We washed our hands and arms, wiped her down with warm water on paper towels. She was still a little sticky, but no matter. I ended up nursing her back to sleep.
The online solution was to use an oral syringe for reluctant medicine takers. Well, okay. There was also stuff about trying various flavors and brands, which, while logical, didn't seem entirely practical at one in the morning.
But there *has* to be an easier way to give medicine to a balky two-year-old, right?
A+
