Using ibuprofen and paracetamol together

[Katie272]

My 8 month old had a really bad night last night teething, the teething powder alongside calpol that I was using wasn't providing him any relief and he was up all night crying.

I was advised to try anbesol and ibuprofen (neurofen) instead. He's been ok today mostly but in the case that he is in pain later I was reading the dosage on the ibuprofen. It says he can have it once every 6 hours 3x a day. And also paracetamol can be used alongside this if necessary but paracetamol is every 4 hours.

I read on the NHS website that if they're still in pain 2 hours after the ibuprofen dose they can have paracetamol. Then alternate the medications. I'm not planning on doing this unless absolutely necessary but can anyone explain to me when the next ibuprofen dose would be? Would I restart the 6 hours or would it just be an extra 4 hours?

Yes you can do this and it is safe. The gaps between doses are minimums for each individual medication, the two substances work in very different ways so it is fine to alternate. Because of the alterations, the gaps between each dose of one medication is longer so it can last the whole 24 hours.

An example schedule might be:

07:00 paracetamol (if using paracetamol alone, could have next dose at 11am but...)
10:00 ibuprofen (so don't need the paracetamol at 11am)
13:00 paracetamol
16:00 ibuprofen
19:00 paracetamol
22:00 ibuprofen

With any luck of it's a good night for sleep you may get through to 7:00am next day with no further dose needed, but if he's crying in the night and you feel he needs it he can have another dose of paracetamol any time between midnight and 3am with no worries. If he needs another dose after 3am but before 7am next morning then it's ok to go ahead but the medication timings next day would need to be adjusted so that it remains at least 4 hours between the last night-time dose of calpol and the first next-morning dose.