New Medicine

Well, my poor baby boy is still suffering with coughing and wheezing and asthma related complications more than a month after the initial cold that he got and he is now back on his albuterol through the nebulizer three times a day. The good news, though, is that we also have been prescribed a preventative medicine that he will take twice daily. It is an inhaled steroid (pulmicort) that is supposed to help him not have as many episodes and hopefully be able to better handle allergies and colds. The bad news is that he is still not all that fond of the nebulizer, although he has gotten so, so much better at sitting and holding it himself and taking most of it if we sing and distract him with all of the animal sounds, body parts and things in the house that he knows (this is another one of those times, although rare I will admit, that I wish they actually liked to sit and watch television or movies). Yesterday evening he held it in place well for about 5 minutes and then started saying "all done." He wasn't all done and he knew it but he had to try. Thankfully he kept going even though it was obvious that he was over it and even started clapping for himself when he actually was all done. Katie Bug gets so jealous and just cries and whines because she doesn't get to do "ba-ba" (what we have called it since he was little). I think that works in our favor with Tyler because little man starts to think he is getting to do something special, but inevitably he starts to try to hand it to her to do too because he hates to see her so upset. This is going to be difficult for a while and hopefully it will just become part of our routine - but we now have to do a breathing treatment in the morning of albuterol, a treatment of the preventative medicine five minutes after that, and then we have to brush his teeth (another challenge) to help him avoid getting thrush, and then do it all over again mid-day and in the evening.

Lance took him to the doctor and when he was given the prescription he asked the doctor how we were supposed to get him to take all of these medicines if he is not in a cooperative mood. I guess Tyler is unusal, but it is literally impossible to give him a treatment when he gets worked up. Both Lance and I have tried to team up with one of us holding him still with his arms captured and the other holding the mask to his face (while singing maniacally), and it is just futile. Of course, the doctor's advice was to give him a firm no if he starts to protest and if that didn't work (which he expected that it would) then to just put him in time out. Ummm, ok - either you have amazingly well behaved children or we have really bad ones, but the firm no thing is just laughable. When he is clawing at the mask, jerking his head side to side, while also contorting his body to get out of the tightest hold we can get and yelling at the top of his lungs I don't think he could even hear the word no. So far, so good though on giving him the power and lots of praise when he holds it and does so well - hopefully that will continue and we can get him better. I am back to wondering what we are doing wrong - it seems like nobody else has these issues - maybe it is because Katie just makes the situation that more stressful by begging and crying to do it too, or maybe we have given Tyler too much autonomy all along and he thinks he gets to decide what he does and does not do, or maybe he is just an exceedingly strong (in will and physically) 25 (!!!) pounder, who knows. I do know one thing, though, I will definitely be asking about getting an inhaler instead (allowed at age 2) when we have our 2 year check-up.