Home 11-8-11 Miss K is 3 Months Old

Miss K has been doing great. Her heart rate has stayed at a steady, normal pace for over a month now without any episodes of SVT. She really hates her medications though. 


Since the day Miss K was officially put on the oral versions of Propanolol, Amiodarone and Keppra we have had to deal with getting her to take them without a problem, yeah right!

In the beginning we could put the syringes in the back of her mouth and just dribble the medications down her throat. The only issue we had was the Propanolol which is very strong and nasty tasting, she would choke on it and gag which would inevitably put her into SVT.

We started trying a MediBottle to administer her medications. At first it was extremely easy, she took the medications like milk, especially the Amiodarone. Frustrating enough this only lasted about a month though. At 3 months old Miss K decided she wouldn't suck on anything synthetic, except teething rings that is. No Pacifier, no Bottle and especially no MediBottle.

We tried putting the syringe in the back corner of her cheek like the Pharmacist suggested but our cute baby girl learned how to roll it forward and out of her mouth very quickly.

She also started vomiting while we were administering her medications thus forcing us to start over on the dose and try again. Not to mention the need to change her wet and soiled clothes as well as mine each time.

I finally discovered we could buy flavored syrup from the pharmacy. This has proven to be a great idea, she now takes the medications with a lot less gagging. But she still tries to spit it out.

The best technique we've found is to hold her with your hand supporting her neck. We tip her head way back and squeeze a small amount of the medication into her cheek at a time (about 0.5 ML each squirt). Then we hold her tilted back so she can't spit it out as easily, the medication is forced to stay at the back of her mouth. For some reason if she starts to gag we are able to stop her from vomiting about 60% of the time by squeezing her cheeks together (causing her mouth to make fishy lips) a few times, somehow this makes her forget what she was going to do and she ends up swallowing instead. Lately we've had a lot less stress giving her the medications by practicing this technique as well as flavoring the medications with the syrup.