By the time you have a baby, visits to the pharmacy begin to multiply. Week by week, month by month, you need some or other things and in the end you realize that what you have at home is no longer four syrups, but a small branch of the pharmacy. Come on, there are times when you suspect someone will knock at the door asking if "the pharmacy is on call here."
The fact is that when your child has a cold, with his cough and snot, and you want to do something for him, like when you drink something, it usually happens Children's syrup, the one your mother gave you, can't take it until 2 years old. "How strange," you tell yourself, "because I go to the doctor to give me one for children under two years of age." But you come back without him, because there isn't. You go to the pharmacy and they tell you the same thing, that they are not for children under 2 years old. Then you ask yourself: Why? What do I do then with my son and his cold?
For children under two years old they are very dangerous
The main reason is that cough and cold medications, the typical ones you can buy at a pharmacy for children, without a prescription, they can have serious or very serious side effects in children under two years old.
In the prospects they are not explained because they are not really a drug for them (we can directly read "contraindicated in children under 2 years"), but according to the Medicines Agencies, they can cause seizures, tachycardia, decreased levels of consciousness and even death.
In Babies and more, are cough treatments effective?At other times, without any of these undesirable effects happening, it may happen that it appeases symptoms of diseases that should be visible, such as tonsillitis and pneumonia. And I say they should be visible because if they are masked, the infection can continue without realizing, by syrup, to become visible when it is even more serious and the treatment more complicated.
What can we do then for babies and children under two years?
Well, the same thing that many adults do: any. Colds, as the US FDA states, are self-limited diseases, that as they arrive, they leave, and they do not need treatment. Cough and mucus drugs, the syrups we give to older children, only relieve their symptoms, but neither cure them nor make the cold last less.
In the case that they have a lot of mucus, we can increase the intake of liquids a little, for example water, if they are older than 6 months. We can help them get the mucus out with some serum, too. If they have a cough, be clear that it is a defense mechanism that helps the child get the mucus (that is, cough is beneficial) and, at night, to rest a little, pull the onion remedy (you know, you cut an onion and leave it near where the child sleeps, to make her throat "cry" and calm her a little ). And if they are over a year old, honey works very well. In fact, I usually drink hot water with honey and lemon when I catch a cold.
And antibiotic?
Many parents wonder why they don't send their child antibiotics, if babies can already take it. True, newborn babies, when they need them, can already take antibiotics. But this is when they need them, that is, when the infection is bacterial. If we are talking about a cold or the flu, which are viral diseases, the antibiotic makes no sense. There are no drugs that cure the cold or the flu, so you don't have to give antibiotics for it.
When to go to the doctor?
Not giving cough syrups or mucus and knowing that colds heal on their own does not make us have to believe that they are diseases that do not require surveillance. Sometimes they get complicated and we must know what the symptoms are for, so yes, consult the pediatrician. These symptoms are:
- Fever in the case of a baby of two months or less or fever of more than 38ºC at any age.
- Signs that it is difficult for the child to breathe: accelerated breathing, wheezing (pitos), the child opens the nostrils in each breath or we see that the ribs protrude when breathing.
- If you have bluish lips.
- Earache.
- He does not want to eat or drink.
- Excessive irritation or drowsiness
- If the cough lasts more than three weeks or if we see that the picture is getting worse.
In the pharmacy I have been told that syrup is not, but homeopathy is
It has happened to me. Go find something at the pharmacy and try to strain homeopathy to relieve associated symptoms. If it has happened to me, I imagine that other parents will also happen, and especially if they are going to buy a syrup for the cold of their child under 2 years and can not sell anything. They tell you that life-long syrups do not, but that they can take homeopathic syrups, or the useless Oscillococcinum.
Homeopathy, as we have said on many occasions, does not work. It has no real effect linked to treatment, but as much (which is not little) related to the placebo effect, which is the belief that what you are given to the child will help and improve.
My advice is that you do not spend money on products (they can not even be called medicines) that have not proven effective, although as it is often said: "Everyone who spends his money on what he considers best."
