That Baby Ain't No Fool

Stow got hit with a nasty intestinal thing that requires 6.5 ml three times a day of the most horrible medicine you can imagine. The pharmacist shook his head when he handed it to me. "Good luck," he said, but in his eyes, I could tell he thought we'd need a lot more than luck. They only had raspberry flavoring, so I came home with a huge bottle of purplish-red glop.

The first dose went off without a hitch. The completely unsuspecting Stow drank it all before realizing just how bad it tasted. By the next dose, he was on to us. After happily consuming his regular medicine, he flat-out refused to have anything to do with the new stuff. I knew we were headed for trouble when he actually checked the dropper to see what color the medicine was before taking it. He clamped his jaws shut and turned his head away from me, kicking and pushing for good measure. Any little bit of the medicine I managed to get into his mouth came spilling out onto his clothes and the floor, red dye everywhere. Blasted raspberry!

Thus began 48 hours of Stow refusing absolutely any medication. 48 hours. We tried everything. Really. We mixed it in juice, apple sauce, rice (what? He loves rice). We tried hiding it in strawberry jam and spreading it on bread. We put it on bananas. We mixed it with Sun Butter and stuck it to the roof of his mouth. We even called the doctor and then the pharmacy so we could get it in tablet form, thinking we could crush it up and hide it in more things, ninja-like. We tried catching him when he was sleeping, playing, watching TV.

On the first day of absolute refusal, I called the doctor.

"You have to get this stuff into him," she said. "Otherwise, he will get very sick."

I already knew this. The pressure didn't help.

On the second day, I called her again, desperate this time. She'd tried to find alternatives medications. There were none.

"Have you tried pinning him down, forcing the dropper to the back of his throat and holding his lips shut?" she asked.

"Umm, no." I mean, who wants to do that?

"Well, it's that or hospitalization and an IV."

So, that night, while I held him down, Ren pushed the dropper as far into Stow's mouth as he could without actually gagging him. The baby struggled and gasped, but we managed to get about half of a dose into him. After we let him go, he stood up and dutifully drank the rest as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

That baby ain't no fool. If the choices are to be gagged or to take yucky medicine, he'll take the medicine, thank you very much.