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In this informative capsule we give you tips on how to give medication to your baby, as many families, especially first-timers, have a lot of trouble doing so.
Stress caused by the news of the diagnosis
When you have a baby with a health problem, the emotional burden is very high. The stress caused by this situation increases when you are faced with mealtime, when you have to incorporate the medication that has been prescribed.
Being a baby, it can be complicated to take certain types of medication, so in this informative capsule we give you some tips with Ana Amate, president of the Cystic Fibrosis Balearic Association and mother of a child with Cystic Fibrosis.
Taking Kreon
Ana tells us the tricks she used to give him Kreon, a capsule with granules that provides pancreatic enzymes to digest food.
When his son Joan was a baby, he had to take 1/3 or 1/4 of the contents of the capsule, so she devised a trick to distribute the contents in the correct doses. She bought empty capsules of different colors at the pharmacy and, with the help of her husband, they distributed the granules in the capsules of the color that corresponded to that dose.
In this way, they could leave the child quietly with the grandparents with only the capsules that would be the correct color at the time.
Today, Kreon no longer presents this problem, because it now comes in bottles with loose granules and a dispenser to make it easier to take the correct dose.
What happens when the baby vomits during feeding?
On the other hand, these capsules are not accepted by the babies, so they were given only the granules in a teaspoon.
And what happens when they vomit during feeding, do you have to give them Kreon again or not?
For Kreon to take effect, 20 to 30 minutes must have passed since the feeding, so if vomiting occurs before that time, we can give only half the dose, while if that time has already passed, we should not give Kreon again.
Finally, if we know that the baby will eat in more than an hour, the dose can be divided into two doses.
Taking vitamins
On the subject of vitamins, Ana explains that Joan had to take some of the liquid from the round tablet (Auxina). That was a problem because, when you inserted the needle into the round tablet to extract that part of the liquid, the air pressure caused the tablet to deform.
To avoid this problem, insert the needle through the lower part of the round tablet, pierce through the upper part and lower the needle to the lower third. At this point it is possible to extract the corresponding liquid normally because the upper hole eliminates the pressure that used to deform the tablet.
Intake of extra sal dose
With the extra salt intake, Ana explains that the concentration of this mineral in the form of medicine is very high compared to that of sea water. Therefore, it is not surprising that babies do not want to take it and spit it out or vomit.
Marian, mother of Ona, less than one year old, explains that when she put the syringe cannula in the side of her mouth, she spit it out. After several attempts, she solved this problem by buying a pacifier whose rigid part has two rings instead of a smooth surface. Taking advantage of the rings, while Ona sucks on the pacifier and is entertained, she passes the cannula through one of the rings and gives her the salt, so that Ona takes it without any problem because she is entertained with the pacifier.
We hope these tips for giving medication to your baby will help you.
You can find more information in our healthy eating manual for people with Cystic Fibrosis.
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