How we dewormed our kid

During Ethan’s recent checkup at the PD’s, I mentioned to Dr Jessica that I was rather worried about Ethan’s eating habits; that he did not want to eat pieces of meat and vege, but instead only liked the carbs.  I told her I was concerned if he had worms in his tummy.  And that was when Dr Jessica said she was glad I brought it up, because she normally dewormed her patients when they turned 2.

She prescribed Vermox for Ethan, and it was probably a good thing too, because lately he has a bad habit of playing with his mouth and tongue.  And goodness knows what he has touched before that.  The booklet of instructions contained in the Vermox box specifically warned that it should be administered on kids 2 years and over only.  The dosage was 10ml (the entire bottle) and according to Dr Jessica, it had a sticky constituency.

Pete and I were scratching our heads, trying to think of an effective way to feed 10ml of foreign liquid to Ethan, when even 2.5ml of medicine would be met with protests, kicking and screaming.  I know the Vermox is a chocolate flavored one, which is usually okay with kids, but Ethan doesn’t really like chocolate too.

I kept the box of Vermox in the fridge for a few days, and of and on, Ethan would pick up the box out of curiosity and ask me to open it.  We did consider pouring the Vermox mixture into the small plastic cup provided and coaxing Ethan to drink from it, but the whatif was if Ethan pushed away the cup, the whole mixture would be wasted.

Then Pete suggested mixing it into Ethan’s “nenno”.  I was a bit apprehensive at first because the risk was that if he rejected it, then he might reject future feeds of “nenno” too.  But then last night, I took a look at how much 10ml was compared to Ethan’s nightly 6oz feed, and it was rather negligible.

So I bit the bullet, made Ethan’s milk last night with 6oz of warm water, 3.5 scoops of Pediasure and poured the 10ml of Vermox into the mixture.  The 0.5 scoop of Pediasure was a little assurance to offset the smell and taste of Vermox, if any.  I took a whiff of the mixture I had concocted and it smelled vaguely like chocolate milk, though visually it still looked like “nenno”.

After Ethan’s shower, I took him to the room to dress him up in his peejays.  Gave him his milk when he asked for it, and sang him a few songs.  While singing “The wheels on the bus”, I mentally kept track of the decreasing amount of milk in the bottle.  Halfway through “Thumbkin”, and he was almost done.  I sang a few more nursery rhymes, complete with actions, and voila!  He polished the entire bottle of milk 😛

….together with the Vermox 😆