BrotherMax all in one thermometer **DO NOT BUY**

[BabaDriscoll]

Hi, Im a first time father, and a first time poster. I am writing this to warn other people about this rubbish and potentially dangerous product.

My 7 month old Son has been on and off sick for the past couple weeks after starting at nursery, Weve been using this thermometer on an off while he was sick and it always showed his temperature as being OK. To be honest, i never really trusted it, as im an industrial engineer specialising in temperature measurement and control !

On sunday night, to cut a long story short, he had a febrile convulsion owing to a severly high temperature from a Fever. Brother max thermo showed a nice pleasant 37.6 degrees about 10 minutes before. Forehead and ear.

I thought he was going to die in my arms. Terrifying. There, i said it. Defo traumatised enough to want to tell others and potentially warn them.

In hindsight we should have trusted our instinct and not this piece of uncalibrated rubbish in a nice orange branding !

Do not put your faith in this product, as its not accurate. People may say we didnt know how to use it correctly, but things like this should be idiot proof for non medically trained parents like us!!

How scary for you. Febrile convulsions are awful to watch (but surprisingly common).

I'm sure that your DS will make a full recovery, but i do remember that overwhelming feeling of incapacity to make everything instantly better.

How scary for you. Febrile convulsions are caused by a rapid rise in temperature and not necessarily a high one so it is possible that his temperature was normal when you had checked it 10 minutes before and it was the sudden spike that caused it. Hope he is feeling better now.

Hello, Jonathan here, owner of Brother Max and a dad of two boys myself. I?m genuinely sorry to read about your experience BabaDriscoll, and as a parent myself I know how scary a convulsion can be. I?m sorry you have lost all faith in our thermometer and, given your experience, I understand you?re not going to want to hear about possible misuse or how a convulsion can come on frighteningly suddenly as suggested by bumbleymummy.

However, I would like to say that the fault rate of our One-Touch 3-in-1 Digital Thermometer is just under 0.5% against the industry norm of 5% and if your thermometer is one of the few faulty ones then I profusely apologise. I will understand if you don?t want a replacement thermometer, however I would still like to work with you to rectify the situation and your personal experience. Please do contact me directly on [email protected] with your contact details - including your phone number if you wouldn't mind - so that I can deal with this personally. Thanks. Jonathan.

How is your little boy now?

Please be reassured that febrile convulsions are fairly common and though distressing to witness, are not usually dangerous. As already said, they are not caused by high temps, but by a rapid rise of temp. Both of my nieces suffer from them and can spike from 36.5 to 37.5 and fit but the thermometer alone would reassure you they're okay.

When your little boy's under the weather, a good way of assessing whether he has a temp (and an accurate one too) is by comparing it to your own. If you press your lips to the back of his neck, you should be able to gauge how much warmer he is than you. Parents are surprisingly good at this. And looking at your child as a whole and not just at the number on a thermometer is of key importance. A child can run a highish fever whilst still being very well in themselves whereas a child with a normalish temp can be v rundown. I'm not saying don't use a thermometer, they're a brilliant tool, but there are other things you can do which will also help you feel reassured as I can guarantee that the next time your little boy is ill, you will be sick with worry after your experience this time round.

Hope he's on the mend.

You don't have to be a medical person to put your hand on a child's head and feel that he is far too hot. Common sense says that if a child feels exceptionally hot to the touch but the thermometer says he's okay then there's obviously an issue and the first thing to do would be to re-check using a different instrument.

If you thought something was wrong why ever didn't you get another thermometer and double check? You say you're a professional dealing in that area yet it didn't occur to you to that there was obviously a fault with your thermometer with the discrepancy between the feel of the child and the reading it was giving?

Or to do something about that?

I understand it must have been hugely distressing to see your baby having a febrile convulsion but you can't put all the blame on the thermometer or tell people not to buy one because you didn't double check.

If you had double checked you would have known there was a problem, you could have contacted the manufacturers and it could have been established whether yours was a one off fault or a batch problem with the calibration.

Your professional knowledge must tell you that faults do occur and it is unfortunate that this particular fault had the consequence it did. However, you do need to take some of the responsibility yourself for not having the common sense to check something that was obviously wrong.

FWIW, febrile convulsions are cause by a sudden, rapid rise in temperature, not a sustained high temp according to the paediatrician we saw after a similar episode with dc1.