Giving child antibiotics - will they hate us???

[anniemay123]

Hi everyone, my daughter is 6 months old. Last week she had a fever that just wouldn't go away. She initially didn't have any other symptoms, but 3-4 days in the doctor said her ears looked inflamed and that she probably had an ear infection. Because she had had a fever for so long they suggested precautionary antibiotics. We have to give her 5ml three times a day.

The problem is that with each dose she's getting increasingly upset. She now refuses to open her mouth and my husband has to try and pry her mouth open (several times because we're giving it to her in bits). She then spits it out so we have to catch it with a spoon and try and give it her the remaining liquid again :(

I feel she is looking at us differently - I feel so upset (and I'm not even giving it to her!!) because she doesn't understand why we're doing what we're doing. All she knows is that we're forcing her to do something she doesn't want to do - she's crying so bitterly the whole time (it takes us about 10 mins). She's even started crying before we start giving her the antibiotics.

We have tried distractions but she knows what's coming. The pharmacist said we should be giving the whole dose within 10 mins.

We're having to do this every 8 hours and it makes me worry that it's almost like we're "training" her....and not listening to her cries.

We also haven't started weaning her and I worry that she'll have negative associations with food :( - this is the first time she's had a spoon in her mouth and it has been to do something so horrid :(.

Please reassure me :( we love her so much and I don't want this to affect how she feels about us - especially because it's so regularly that we're having to do it over the next 7 days.

Thanks

It’s about being cruel to be kind. I personally wouldn’t mix it with anything at 6 months, she is young enough to take it without having to have it disguised. And if you want her to grow up and take medicine ok then it’s best to just have a few seconds of being horrible and then carry on! Otherwise you’ll have issues when she’s older and that’s not as easy to solve. Either use a dummy (if she has one) and just have a drink ready to take the taste away (or a chocolate button!).
She won’t hate you for it, she will forget about it in a few minutes and it’s far more important that the infection is treated

All these people saying it’s easy with a syringe - I haven’t found that at all??? Have only given calpol so far but my daughter just spits it straight out 🙁 have tried in her cheek, towards the back of the throat, she always spits almost all of it out. As an aside - why on Earth is calpol so damn sticky!!! I detest giving it as we all end up sticky. The only thing that’s worked for us is mixing it with a small amount of milk - no good if you’re breastfeeding of course. Even at 10m mine doesn’t eat reliably enough to mix it with yogurt - there’s a good chance it would be spat out.

OP, your daughter won’t hate you but I can understand you don’t want to upset her. I’d recommend trying mixing it with milk, or trying a syringe as other posters have had more luck than I have!!

Syringe all the way. My DD is over 2 and I’m finally thinking of throwing away the medicine syringes as now she’ll take it off a spoon. Don’t think I will though, as she’s 2 and cannot be reasoned with yet

Thanks everyone for your input. We are using a syringe to give her the antibiotics but she does spit a lot of it out which we then catch with a spoon and put back in the syringe. We've tried putting larger volumes in her mouth in one go but it then gone if less control in catching what she spits out because so much more is coming out.

She's getting increasingly hard to give medicine to though - she now clamps her mouth shut even more, kicks, turns her head away, arches her back..... Anything to avoid the syringe going in her mouth.

We might give the milk bottle a go. She refuses a bottle but we'll have a practice run in the morning and hope for the best.

Thanks for all the reassurance. I was just feeling so guilty about making her so upset.