This is One Thing, a column with tips on how to live.
At first, trying to give my baby medicine brought to mind a Wikihow illustration of a cat, with its owner’s hands holding its head back, prying its jaws open, holding a pill over its tongue while the creature winces. You can tell what’s about to happen—the cat is not going to take that pill. The cat does not care that its life (and by extension yours) will be improved by the pill. In fact, the cat does not know anything about the concept of medicine. And lucky you: You’re living in the cat’s world.
Babies take medicine (antibiotics for an ear infection; Tylenol for a fever) in liquid form, dispensed into their mouth via syringe, which cats do sometimes too. When it comes to felines and liquid meds, PetMD recommends both using a “burrito wrap” and having an assistant. This also kinda sorta works for babies. If you’re lucky, not too much of the medicine will wind up dripping down your adorable creature’s chin.
There is, however, a key difference between babies and cats that you can exploit to your advantage: Babies are born with a “suck reflex,” which is how they know to breastfeed or bottle-feed, and why they like pacifiers. And it turns out there’s an ingenious, inexpensive little invention that combines the pacifier with the medicine syringe. It’s called different things depending on the brand—we have the Frida Accu-Dose Paci—but there’s also Dr. Brown’s Pacidose, as well as other options that are findable by searching “baby medicine pacifier.” They are all about $10 to $15 and involve pushing medicine into your baby’s mouth via a small hole in the paci, more or less completely removing the struggle. They are to babies as pill pockets are to pets.
Ours is one of those things I didn’t know I needed but now would, no questions asked, pay $100 if someone decided to kidnap it (and, I guess, all the other medical pacis in the world?) and demand a ransom. We got it in a box of other cute little baby medical supplies from a neighbor, and I firmly believe that it makes the perfect baby shower gift. Your recipient will open it and probably be a little confused. It’s OK. In several months, possibly in the middle of the night, you’ll get a very grateful text.
