Welcome to Kira's Blog

Welcome to My Blog

Life with young children can be challenging, but with the support and advice of friends, we can feel empowered and thankful for the blessing of being a Mom.

My musings are those of a self-proclaimed attachment-parenting Tiger mom, who juggles full-time mommying with a small (but growing!) baby-related business. I hope some of my thoughts help you
Enjoy your day, Enjoy your night, and Enjoy your kids!!!

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Dosage Dilemmas

One of parenthood's more interesting ironies is that of dosage levels of medicine for your sick child.

Picture the following: You are woken at 2am by your 7month old's wailing and coughing in the next room. You go in and find him drenched in sweat, shivering and clearly with a fever and cold. You quickly change him, check his temperature and read 101.1, and head to the medicine cabinet to give him some infants' tylenol. You carefully examine the bottle, looking for the right dose to give your crying, shaking child. To your surprise, for children under 24 lbs, under 2 years of age, it simply says "consult physician"... for real!!! This is INFANTS' tylenol, but in order to give it to your infant, you have to call your physician! (After all, children over 2 would probably be getting CHILDREN'S tylenol, instead, since they don't need to use the dropper by that point).

So what do you do? Call and wake up your pediatrician? And what do you do when he asks how much your child weighs and you have no recollection? After all, it's been a few months since his last fever, and he's gotten pretty big since then... Well, will your pediatrician be running to his office to check your child's charts at 2am, just for dosage advice to treat a 101 degree fever??!

Luckily, for those of us on the internet, there are some helpful resources. The one I find particularly user-friendly is on the askdrsears.com website, at the "medicine cabinet" link. Here, Dr. Sears lists most common medicines and includes dosage information for babies. Also, he includes comprehensive information about each medication, which is especially helpful for new parents.

Why this information is not more widely available is somewhat beyond my comprehension, since I'm pretty sure most pediatricians don't want to be woken in the middle of the night for basic medicine questions. I'm sure it relates to liability on the part of the manufacturer, but I think pediatricians would be wise to make sure their patients have access to dosage information, so that they don't have to deal with the 2am not-even-close-to-emergency calls.

So, the next time your baby has a mid-level fever and you don't want to "bother" your pediatrician with basic dosage questions, check out the Dr. Sears site and save yourself a call.

No comments:

Post a Comment