The way illness usually works around our house is that Quinn
will catch a cold from some
germ-ridden place, like the Children’s Museum or Happy Hollow,
and then he will pass it on to Hubs. Occasionally, Hubs will be the first to
contract the bug due to his business travels, and then he’ll give it to Q.
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| A treat for a sick toddler is watching kid shows on TV in Mommy and Daddy's bed. |
Somehow, more often than not, I manage to avoid getting
sick, despite repeatedly being kissed, breathed, sneezed, coughed and snotted on.
But this time around was different. I got sick first. Me,
the germophobic freak show who
washes and sanitizes her hands a hundred times a day – and has the dry, cracked,
bloody knuckles to prove it – got sick first. After a week of listening to me cough
up a lung and sound like a dying frog, neither Q nor Hubs showed any signs of
this nasty plague that has affected every household in a fifty-mile radius.
Until Friday. Just as I was finally starting to feel like my
old self again and thinking that was the last we’d see of the awful illness, Q
started coughing and sneezing. If you’ve ever experienced the Toddler Cold, you
know how much everyone in the house suffers. No one sleeps. No one has any fun.
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| Uh oh. I think Hubs is getting sick, too. Toddler Cold + Man Cold = Mommy better run for it! |
Silly me, I thought that when a child reached the age of
two, they could finally have children’s cold medicine. Imagine my devastation
when I called the doctor’s office and found out that the magical age when I can
finally drug my child is FOUR, not two.
After perusing every bottle in the children’s medicine aisle at the drugstore,
I confirmed this dreadful truth. Each one said “not for children under four.” We
have two more years of this madness. Shoot
me now.
Then I found one bottle that said 2+. Hyland’s Nighttime Cough ‘N Cold for Kids, which is all
natural and contains no drugs. Now, you should know I’m not really into
alternative medicine or all-natural living. I like my cold medicine (especially
after almost two years of not being able to take anything due to pregnancy and
breast feeding!) I like my Red Bull and Diet Pepsi. I can’t justify the high
cost of buying only organic food, and restricting our diets only to foods that
contain five ingredients or less sounds like a s**t-ton of work.
However, in my neck of the woods (or anywhere in
California), it’s not hard to find hippies people who know about this
stuff. They’ve been a remarkable source of information for me since having
Quinn. I’m now a huge believer in probiotics
and Manuka honey. I had heard
good things about Hyland’s, so I decided to try it.
I gave Quinn this all-natural elixir before his nap and at
bedtime. Normally, Q barely sleeps when he’s sick. He wakes up constantly and
can’t get back to sleep because he can’t breathe. Then I (or Hubs) hold him
upright in the rocking chair, and he’s sound asleep again before his head hits my
shoulder. After a few minutes, I carefully lay him back down in his crib and go
back to bed. Thirty minutes later, his cries set off the baby monitor again, I shoot
straight up in bed like there’s a lightning bolt up my ass, and the whole
process starts over again. See, like I said, no one sleeps.
Yet after two nights (and two naps) of taking the Hylands
before sleep, Q has slept soundly each time. He wakes up coughing occasionally,
but then instantly goes back to sleep. Apparently, he can actually breathe.
To quote my dear friend, Robin, it’s a Christmas miracle.
For the sake of full disclosure, we also give Q children’s
Advil to ease his sore throat and to help with the teething pain he’s experiencing
on top of all this sickness, and we run a humidifier with a VapoRub steam next
to his bed. But we’ve always done those two things, and Quinn has never slept
well while sick until taking Hyland's.
I haven’t tried the Manuka honey yet. That would require Q to actually eat something. But I will
keep trying to find ways to sneak it in to his food and let you know what happens.
