Good to the Last Drop

The prescription label says: "Take one teaspoon of medicine every 12 hours." Not the teaspoon used to stir tea, but one you use to measure salt or baking soda in a recipe. At tea spoon is not a teaspoon by any measure!

But getting the teaspoon of medicine out of the spoon into your tum (or trickier yet, your baby’s mouth) is not always easy. Sure, you can use one of those tiny plastic cups packaged with the medicine, but the residual medicine slides back down into the cup and you wind up not giving or getting the full dose. You could try adding a few drops of water, giving it a swirl and downing the rest, but that really makes a mess. (Trust me; I tried it.)

My son uses a syringe shooter (that’s what I call it) to squirt medicine into baby Trey’s mouth. Most of it goes down his throat before he has a chance to think about spitting it back out. The benefit of this tactic is that there's no medicine left in the syringe. I think that’s the best way to make sure the full dose is given every time no matter how old you are.