Many of us know how painful injections are so can you imagine what they are like for a baby. Those poor little one month old’s getting their BCG’s or boosters in both their legs.
I still remember when Baby Z went in for her first ever injections. Me being me, thought it would be one injection in the leg. When it came to it, they put one in each leg! After that they told me she’ll be fine, other than swelling, just give her some Calpol and she’ll relax. Now my little one was a kicker like most little ones. Her arm movements were less and her legs would kick like crazy. So this was not going to be fun.
When we got home after the initial screaming and crying at the doctors (some crying from me), we waited the given time by the doctors and then gave Baby Z her Calpol. Come evening the swelling turned up and the soreness increased. My poor baby would scream then calm down. The legs would stop moving whilst she relaxed. The minute she relaxed she kicked her legs and the screaming would start again. Like being in an eternal circle we somehow managed to survive the horrific night.
After the first set of injections we started to do some research. By the second injection we gave a trial run of what we found. We gave Baby Z her Calpol dose about an hour before her injection, once her swelling increased we gave her another dose (about 3 hours later) and then continued the recommended course. This made a massive difference to how her body reacted after the injections. By the third set of injections we had mastered it. We gave her the Calpol dose half an hour before her injections, that way her body was just getting relaxed by the time she had her injections. This made the pain a little less of the injection itself. After about 15 minutes or so she would fall asleep from the Calpol to wake up feeling much better. We would then drag the next Calpol dose to about 3 and half hours after (once the screaming came about). The rest of the night would be kept at the same prescribed dosages.
To be honest, each experience was as horrendous as the first, I didn’t get any sleep, she didn’t get any sleep – as she was on me all night. We had to lie in an awkward position as to not let anything touch her injected areas. However, the timing in the Calpol dosages really helped, she was screaming a lot less, she didn’t get a fever and she didn’t swell up as much as she did the first time.
I came to realise that not all should be done by the books, but experiment a little. Obviously you know your baby best even if they are only a few weeks old. If we hadn’t researched after the first set of immunisations, we possibly would have been having the repeat horrid experience we had when she got her BCG’s.
The post Baby Immunisations appeared first on Mummys Bubble.