The medicine cabinet & tips for chesty babies…

Or organising take 2…
Get me I actually did more organising; mostly due to the attack of viruses over the Christmas holidays using up all our medical supplies! So I restocked and reorganised…

Now I find myself lucky enough to have storage in my bathroom I’ve utilised it with an emergency medical bucket. This consists of…

• The bucket – for obvious reasons
• Febreeze
• Kitchen towel and wipes
• Flannels for bringing down temperatures and soothing headaches
• Sports bottle for water to sip on

I thought it would be helpful to have these on hand for night time sickness because I’ve found if I can deal with this quickly and disturb the child as little as possible often I can get them back to sleep without too much upset.

I keep all the medicine downstairs in a high cabinet in the kitchen and only keep the bare essentials. For us this consists of…

• C’s inhalers and spacer
• Infant paracetamol
• Infant ibuprofen (I don’t use this for C in case he is asthmatic).
• Saline nasal drops
• Baby menthol rub and Vicks
• Rehydration sachets
• A few plasters and bandages
• A syringe for the baby and our new magic spoon..!

The Spilly Spoon was sent to us to try after I tweeted about yet another trip to hospital before Christmas. It is so useful Its easy to forget how annoying it was to try and get the correct dose into a spoon or syringe without covering myself the child and/or the floor with sticky liquid. It’s also easy to forget you’ve given medicine as C takes it himself in seconds. Dosages up to 10ml are clearly marked and you can even put it down when full without it spilling. The only problem is he likes it so much he wants to take medicine all the time; I considered letting him have a bit of juice in it but instead decided for comfort it was best kept for its purpose. Now it’s the ‘magic spoon that makes you feel better’.

• We fill the bathroom with steam, running the shower boiling and pour a small bath.
• We give the bath whilst the room is steamy, read a book, play and try to stay in the damp environment as long as possible (between 30-45mins).
• If the child is still having a night feed then use saline drops. All mine hate them but they do usually clear their nose enough to take a bottle a little easier.
• Then I give any medicines they may be on and if they have a heavy cold I give them infant paracetamol whether or not their temp is up. I didn’t do this at first not liking to give any unnecessary medicine but after suffering a few colds myself I remembered how rough and achy you can feel. Since doing this I’ve found many times they’ve settled much better and as sleep is the best thing for healing why wait the hour until the do wake with a temp.
• We raise the head of the bed by putting huge books (it is my belief this is the sole purpose of phone directories these days) under the feet.
• Finally (and this is an old wives tale) we put Vicks on the soles of their feet. I was told this by a nurse and have been converted. No one knows why this works or if it works but I’ve had more settled nights and as it’s harmless it’s worth a go.