Monday is hard to stomach sometimes and today I need my kids to swallow the vaccines we are taking to go on an upcoming trip and I didn’t realize how hard it is to get a child to take medication. I totally forgot we might need to get vaccines to go to Belize and I wouldn’t have even thought to check had we not been visiting the doctor for another reason and we told him we were going on a trip there and he told us we might actually need vaccines for typhoid and malaria because of some of the places we’re visiting. So thanks to our kids’ lovely and informed doctor, my husband and I promptly made appointments with our own doctors and now we all are on a vaccine schedule.
And oh my goodness the typhoid pill we’re taking has become the bane of my existence.
It isn’t that huge but it is an enormous battle trying to get my kids to swallow it and it has to be done on an empty stomach and not taken with any food. It also has to be done a couple times over the course of a week so it’s not just a one time thing and this can be extremely difficult for a beginner pill taker. Thankfully there are other people who have had the same problems with their kids. We’ve been reading:
Helping Children Swallow Pills from Kids Growth
Tips and Tricks to help kids swallow pills from Psychology Today
Pill Swallowing Tricks from The Balanced Mind Parent Network
and the tip about practicing with tic tacs or cake sprinkles has been working on the days in between the doses and we really should have tried it BEFORE we started trying to take the actual medicine which is WAY MORE EXPENSIVE than teeny candies. We are making progress thankfully, but this has been a really eye opening and agonizing experience. And of course we’ve called our doctor’s hotline a couple times in between as well.
So we have definitely learned our lesson. Next time we book a trip I am going to call the doctor right away to see if we need any medications or vaccines but I’m glad we still have time to get this all done.
I hope your Monday is full of a lot more delight and less agony and drama than mine.
(PS every person is different and this blog is just to tell you of our experiences and not to give actual medical advice. Please consult your family’s medical team for real advice just like we did because if we hadn’t we would have naively been going on our trip and it might have ended up being more of a pill than what we’re dealing with right now.)
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)