I must be seriously hindered in some way. I am developing an unreasonable dislike of infant med dispensers. Ok - for those who haven't had the joy of sick babies, here's the thing: you buy infant tylenol and it comes with built in eye-droppers or an accompanying syringe. In our case, the baby is 7 mos, so you consult the chart which reads:
Under 25 lbs, under 2 years: CALL YOUR DOCTOR.
25-37 lbs, 2-3 year: 1.6 ml
25 pounds is magic. Don't know why. Our girl is a healthy 20-ish at 7 mos but we worry about misusing meds like all parents, so we called our doc. Our dosage is 1.4 ml. Ok then. Pull out the dropper/syringe. Let's measure this...
For the regular Tylenol, we have the dropper. There are 2 (not) helpful lines on the dropper: 0.4 and 0.8. They are VERY close to each other. The med isn't a liquid and isn't a solid. It's a sticky. A purple goo that when you suck it up into the eye dropper makes big bubbles. (check out this picture. even in the picture, there is a bubble in the tip of the dropper!) When the dropper is in the bottle, you can't see to know when you've reached a line and when you pull it out, you find that there are big bubbles that you can't just shake out.
In other words, it's pretty close to impossible to measure accurately with the dropper they give you.
Ok, moving on to the Infant Tylenol Cold Plus. Where the regular was purple and gooey, this is red and seriously sticky. It's more viscous, but also more sticky. This bottle came with a syringe with the same 2 unhelpful lines. Note that there is a LOT of room on the syringe for more lines and note that even for a small kid, you need more than 0.8, so why is it set up to make me measure and deliver twice?? But the really really REALLY annoying part of this one is that the syringe is EXACTLY the same size as the hole in the bottle. Meaning that when you put the syringe in the bottle, the air in the bottle can't get out, so you give it a little force, resulting in the air getting forced out along with some of the red sticky med. It oozes out the sides or sometimes shoots out splattering all over me. This stuff ain't cheap and it lingers on clothes pretty badly... So why on earth couldn't they make the syringe a lil bit SMALLER than the hole?
ok... play this out with me. It's 2:30 am and the baby is upset because she's sick and her nose is plastered shut. It's dark. There is crying or blood-curdling screaming, depending on how quickly you got up to answer her cries. You pick up the baby to calm her; she sneezes crusty snot all over you but is now a lil happier.
- While holding her (to mute the screaming so you can think and ot let your partner sleep), you fumble with the (very!) childproof cap and the syringe.
- While holding her, open the cap and insert the syringe.
- While holding her (you get the picture), shove syringe in and a splooge of pink stuff flies all over you and back of the baby.
- Keep bopping and humming epithets to lullaby tunes.
- Set down Tylenol bottle with syringe sticking out the top.
- Grab a wet wipe and do some damage control.
- Pull the plunger on the Tylenol and see what you get.
- WAY more than 0.8 so you plunge some back into the bottle.
- Set bottle down and adjust child so you have a shot at her face.
- Try not to drop child while you put med in mouth with one hand. If you are lucky, she'll take it easily, but I'm noticing that her willingness to take the med is inversely proportionate to how sick she feels. More sick = less willing.
- Grap a wet wipe and wipe off the med she has spit out and smeared all over the front of your shirt and her shoulder.
- While humming more epithets, wonder to yourself how many tenths of a mL she actually took in. Wonder if you should measure a lil extra to make up for the pink smears all over both of us. Wonder why you have to measure this twice in the first place.Wonder why there isn't a line for 1.4 mL. Wonder if Tylenol secretly laughs at parents.
- Repeat. At least one more time just to get the "right" dosage.
Yeah, I could put her down, but that would not solve the design issues with the syringe. (And it would result in the pink smears all in her crib.) IF the dag-blamed thing fit in the hole and had reasonable markings, I would not have any trouble...aside from the normal trouble of getting her to accept the meds. Why make it so much harder? If accurate dosage is so important, why provide such piss-poor tools? (Dr. Sears here allows that it's not such a big deal... which I'm comforted by since I'm certain we got more like 1.6mL that last time.)
So anyway, if you see me and my outfit is adorned with pick or purple splatters, it's just another sign that I am a new mother. I'll get the knack of this yet.
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