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Parenting can be a daunting task especially for first time mothers. Some of the time, mothers are faced with situation that require desperate measures. Parents may administer medicine to their children thinking they are helping only to find out they are actually making the situation more complicated.
Therefore, before you self-medicate your baby, it is important to take a keen look of some of the common mistakes’ parents make when it comes to medication.
1. Overmedicating Colds
Many over the counter (OTC) meds contain the same active ingredients even though the symptoms they treat differ. For instance, lots of multi-symptom cold formulas contain acetaminophen, the pain-relieving, fever-reducing drug found in Tylenol. If you treat your child's congestion with a multi-symptom product and her fever with Tylenol, she'll get double the recommended amount of acetaminophen.
2. Mis measuring
Some household kitchen spoons hold two to three times more liquid than others, which could lead to an overdose if they're used to dispense medicine, found a study in the International Journal of Clinical Practice. Another study from the New York University School of Medicine found that 70 percent of parents pour more than the recommended amount into dosing cups with printed markings. Researchers believe this may be in part because some parents tend to think that the cup is the full dose, and others don't look at the cup at eye level when pouring.
3. Using medicine for one child to treat another
Health experts suggest that only pain killers can be used on any child. Pain killers just do the job of curtailing pain. They are not exactly harmful and so any child can use them provided they are put on the right dosage. However, this does not apply to disease-specific medicine such as antibiotics.
Antibiotics, however, can never be mixed up. They are specifically meant for a particular patient at a particular time and therefore can never be extrapolated for use on a different child. Such a case would lead to treatment with wrong medicine; something that can cause antibiotics resistance.
4. When Baby spits out her/his medication, you feed her/him another dose
There’s always a risk of overdosing if you do this. If she spits out only a bit or vomits more than 10 minutes after taking her medication, it is not advisable to repeat the dose. If in doubt, don’t do it.
5. You stop feeding antibiotics when she gets better
Why bother forcing it down her throat since she is already well, right? Wrong. Infection symptoms may recur or worsen a few days after you stop the antibiotics. By this time, the bacteria might have developed resistance to the first antibiotic, and you’ll need stronger ones. Ensure that your little one finishes the entire course, right down to the last drop.
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