Having a sick baby is heartbreaking. So Helena Lee, a nurse practitioner in England, was understandably upset when her 8-week-old son, Alfie, spiked a fever and refused to take his medicine.
“I tried giving him little bits at a time, squirting it all in at once, tried in the middle of feeds, I even tried a spoon but he just gagged or spat it out at me,” Lee told the Manchester Evening News on Monday, October 16. “He then wasn’t getting all the dose so it wasn’t bringing his temperature down.”
That’s when the 33-year-old mom remembered a brilliant hack and decided to give it a shot. She filled a syringe with Capol (the U.K. version of infant Tylenol) and pushed it through the nipple of Alfie’s baby bottle so he could suck on it like he would milk.
“Not 1 bit got wasted and no tears,” Lee wrote in a Facebook post published on Saturday, October 14. Lee then encouraged others to pass along the trick, never anticipating that it would be shared nearly 118,000 times.
“I am completely overwhelmed by the response that it’s had,” she told the paper. “I just intended to help out a few of my mummy friends on Facebook.”
In the comments section, users applauded Lee and shared their own hacks. Wrote one woman: “Just put the Calpol in the milk. Worked with all 3 of my children and my grandchildren.”
