Refusing anything in his mouth??

DS has been sick for about 3 weeks now & has been a variety of medicines over that time - all of which have been given by syringe. He HATES all of them & closes his mouth as soon as he sees the syringe coming. Trouble is, he now refuses anything else I try to put in his mouth (dummy, food on a spoon) - he will only take boob. He is happy to hold the dummy/spoon himself & try to put it in his mouth - but it's a bit hit & miss.

Has anyone else had this problem? Did your DD/DS just get over it? Any suggestions?

Does he still need to have the medication? If he won't have a bar of you giving it to him orally, see if you can have his medication done up as suppositories - not pleasant at all but if he needs it then you have to try to get it into him somehow.

My 4yo DD was exactly the same - wouldn't let me near her with medicine and even if I mixed it with something else, all it would do was turn her off having that. She did eventually grow out of it and your son will too, but it may take time.

Funny little trick which worked with Oskar with medication is to have him on my hip (stick it right out so he's sitting on me pretty much), my arm around him and that hand up on his forehead so his cheek was pretty much against my shoulder and he'd open his mouth and I'd put the syringe in and all done. Another thing too was that Oskar didn't seem to like the syringe but a dropper worked better, I think because it doesn't "squirt" out as fast.

Also, I wouldn't worry too much about the food as he's still pretty young anyway and BF is enough for him anyway.

Ozzie - Thanks for the medicine tips.

It's actually the dummy that frustrates me the most! He normally takes a dummy to go to sleep - but he clamps his mouth shut when he sees it coming (probably because I use it when I'm giving him medicine - to get him to suck/swallow)

Is he still needing his dummy to go to sleep? Maybe if he's not taking it and is going to sleep without just keep going that way??

We found our Pip would take one medicine over others, it was the flavour the pharmacist put in the medicine. Maybe try with different flavours available?

Ozzie - yeah, he needs his dummy to sleep :(

I started anitibiotics on Sunday, and he is starting to get better. As he is less cranky, he seems to be getting over his dummy refusal!

Fortunately, he doesn't mind the taste of the antibiotics (banana) as much as the panadol, nurofen, steroids (all cherry/strawberry flavours - ergh!). I've worked out the trick for him though - he loves to suck my finger, so I let him suck my finger & slide the syringe down the side of my finger. He keeps sucking & swallows all the medicine - everyone's happy (and it works better than trying to stick the dummy in after I squirt the medicine!)