So I am a little behind on news. A few weeks ago there was a recall on infant cold remedies. I knew I had some in the house so I asked my husband if he knew what the recall was about. He said something about labeling. That was good enough for the current moment and I  figured when we needed to use them I would look up what the recall was for before administering anything.

There are a few of us that when we get even a teensy little cold the congestion in our lungs is likely to make you think we are going to keel over from pneumonia at any moment. It sounds horrible and I have lived with it all my life and I passed on the genes for it to at least one of the boys. So when I heard about these little plug-in Vicks machines and these new Sudacare shower tablets that are supposed to help with chest congestion I went looking for them right away knowing it was a matter of time before the first bug of fall came knocking at our door (two days to be exact but that is another story.)

While standing looking for these products I noticed a big gaping hole in the product selection and  a sign mentioning that there has been a voluntary recall on the infant cold products because of rare cases of misuse. Which according to this story they aren't even sure that these remedies are the cause (see page 2 paragraph 5 where it says may be warranted - may as in might, maybe, but also maybe not- and paragraph 6  where it mentions they are still investigating.)

I really, really, really, hate it when mass sums of people have to suffer because of the actions of a few. It is about 75% of the reason I haven't flown since Sept. 11th. It isn't terrorists I am afraid of. It is the no food except peanuts, nothing liquid over 3 oz. , stand in line for hours and remove your shoes silliness that is supposed to keep us safe,but entirely miserable, that ensures I will never willingly set foot in an airport again. (Terrorists are not the other 25% either, the truth is deep down I have always been afraid of flying and now it is such a royal pain I can justify not doing it anymore.)

So you can imagine how frustrating this medicine thing was to me. A few people don't read labels carefully and so now I can't adminster medicine to my baby without checking with the doctor first. I dont know about your kids, but my kids, especially as infants, never get sick at 9:00am on a Wed. morning when every medical person in this time zone is available. No, my kids wait until about 7:00pm on  a Friday night to get sick, when no one is available to tell me how much of what I can safely administer. This is what is truly dangerous. We are at our safest when we can make informed decisions at the moment that those decisons need to be made. Parents need to be able to walk into Wal-Mart at 2:00am and find products with complete dosage instructions that can be safely administered to their young (under 2 years) babies. We should not  have to put things off until Mon. morning or watch our children get so much more miserable that we are scrambling to an emergency room so our little babies can be thoroughly poked and prodded before being  professionally  told "I don't know, must be a cold." Sometimes I think doctors are way too  full of themselves and only out to milk us for as much money as they can get out of us, the supposedly incompetent public.

Reading the labels on your medicine is the  most important thing you can do, not just for your babies but for everyone in your household. Last night, we all got sick (ok, so it wasn't Fri but it was after the doctor was closed.) My husband wanted to take NyQuil before bed but he wanted something in the interim to ease his symptoms. So there I am comparing active ingredients and timing instructions to find out what he can take at that moment so that he can still take his NyQuil before bed.

I was going to do this nice tutorial on how to read your medicine labels, but I am not a very good photographer and all the pics I took of medicine labels are totally illegible and useless. Luckily, I found a really good site right here at the FDA. There are some nice PDFs (or PowerPoint versions if you have access to that) that go through showing you all the things you should look at and compare when deciding if you can take two medicines together (probably the place where most mistakes are made.) There is one geared toward older children (under students) and one geared toward adults (under consumer). There is also what you should teach kids about medicines at different ages and some worksheets. I thought it was really informative.

In the meantime we all have the sniffles here. The really odd thing is that for what seems the  first time ever we all got hit with it at the same time. That is actually a blessing. Normally, one person gets it and just as he is clearing up another  one falls and so on and so on. It can take a good 6-8 weeks to go through a household this size when it goes through at that pace. With everyone getting it all at once we could have this thing escorted out the door in a week or so.

Any post about illness require a plug for the importance of handwashing.If you google"handwashing" or " handwashing curriculum" you will find a lot of activities for teaching kids why and how to wash up- there are different resources for different ages. An image search of "handwashing" will net you several printable poster to choose from.

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