Oh how I hate it when babies get sick. Not only do we have to deal with all day crankiness, but also have to force their mouths open and swallow awful tasting meds. Not just once, but often thrice a day, for about 3 to 7 days!

Giving medicines wasn’t a serious problem for us before. And this was because we seldom feed her sweets (except for fruits which are naturally sweet). That may have sounded weird but infrequent exposure to sugary food made the syrups appealing to her as it has a sweet mix into its bitter taste. So with just a bit of explaining that it would make her better, she happily swallowed!

But not until she had Impetigo and we were prescribed antibiotics. Now this was a different story. She totally hated it! I couldn’t blame her. Even I didn’t like how it smelled. ULK. So how did we do it?

1ST APPROACH: THE INFANT WAY

Believe it or not, we had to pin her down. I know it sounds bad and mean. But since she wouldn’t take it from the medicine cup like she used to, we bought a syringe and decided to do it the “infant” way. We thought it might be better to head straight for the throat and bypass the tongue to avoid the terrible taste. We had wet tissues ready and a spoonful of ice cream for her to gobble right after.

Success? Nope. We managed to get some medicine in, but most ended up on her neck. There was a lot of crying involved and our wrestling-like positions of pinning her down made it worse.

And how many times do we have to do this again? Thrice a day. Not good. Got to think of another way.

2ND APPROACH: MIX IT WITH ICE CREAM WAY

Our pediatrician suggested mixing the full dose with ice cream.

Okay, this was a bit against my will because we don’t let her eat ice cream that much. At that time, she has only tasted 2 flavors, ube and cheese. And this was only when we eat Halo Halo and whenever we were on a children’s party. We have been consciously controlling and delaying sweet food intake because we don’t want to spoil her love for steamed veggies. She eats broccoli, cauliflowers, asparagus, bell peppers, green beans etc, and I intend to keep things that way for as long as we can.

However, out of our desperation, I had no choice but to override our rule and accept that she’s going to have it 3x a day for one whole week. Sigh. Lucky kiddo.

Surprisingly, it still didn’t do the trick. She still wouldn’t take it! The taste and smell of the antibiotics were too strong. We were starting to get hopeless. How else can we get it down her throat…

3RD APPROACH: HALF-DOSE ICE CREAM MIX

Daddy suggested we try to divide the dose into 2 cups of ice cream.

So now she’ll have 2 tiny cups after every meal – totaling to 6 cups a day, 21 cups for the whole week. So much for our efforts of regulating sweet intake…… huhuhu

Well, all right. Whatever.

We melted ice cream in 2 separate cups and put half dose of antibiotics on each cup. We mixed it very well and put it back in the freezer to freeze. This lessens the bad taste compared when ice cream is a bit melted. So yes, we prepared this in advance, to give it enough time to be frozen again.

And this finally did the trick! Though it takes much effort to melt, mix, and freeze, this half-dose ice cream mix made taking medicines wrestling free. No forcing and no crying involved! Just a fun ice cream dessert after meals. She can still taste the medicine but it was much better than taking the medicine alone or having a full dose on a single cup.

And we got better after a week. Hoooooray!

So aside from the medicine expenses, we bought and consumed 2 tubs of 2Liter – 4in1 ice creams (ang gastos…) and she has now tasted 4 more flavors: Rocky Road, ChocoMarble, Mango, and Strawberry.

Oh I got a feeling she would want to be sick again.

How about you, what’s your style in giving meds?