Fever In The Morning, Fever All Through The Night – And Some Tried And Tested Tips On How To Manage Fevers

If there is one thing that Kyla is EXCEPTIONALLY good at – it’s getting fevers.

She will go up to 40 degrees without breaking a sweat (or thankfully without any other incident), she just generally walks around emitting heat like a portable fireplace.  It’s so bad that she was lying next to me on the bed and when she moved I happened to feel the bed, which was SOO hot that I even checked for a little burn imprint of her body on the sheets.

I should have known that when she passed out in the car on the way to a friend on Sunday afternoon, there was something wrong.  Other warning signs could have been that Knox has been pretty sick and miserable for the whole of last week and also, all 3 of them slept through the night AT THE SAME TIME – which is pretty much the second time they have ever done that, ever.  So obviously that last one was a clear indicator that something was brewing – a chance to get any extra bit of sleep to be able to deal with the next onslaught of 24 hour parenting.

Thankfully dealing with fevers has become second nature to us.  One time, when Kyla was 16 months or so, she had 39-40 degree fevers for 5 days straight (with no other symptoms) until they eventually admitted her into hospital to figure out what was going on.  I was administering drugs every 3 hours just to maintain a low grade fever of 37-38.

Like I told you, she shows fevers whose boss.

I know that this is often a terrifying time as a parent especially if you have never had to deal with a fever before, (and just because we have dealt with it so many times doesn’t make the fevers or lack of sleep any easier to deal with) but it does give us a bit of perspective, in that it will pass and it is important to keep them under control.  I have heard about load of people who don’t treat their kids fevers and that’s great for them.  I have also just heard far to many horror stories of kids having seizures at even less than 40 degrees which makes this a no brainer to me.  So, treat away!

So, it’s probably obvious, but I’m going to say it anyway – I’m not a medical professional, but I have paid enough Doctors in Kyla’s lifetime to be able to pass on some tips on how to manage fevers in small children:

• Strip them down to as little as possible – they hate it because, if you have ever had a fever you will know that you just want to keep yourself warm despite how hot you already are, but distract them with TV or something.
• Keep them hydrated – they don’t need to eat necessarily, but they NEED to drink fluid.
• Pat them down with a damp cloth and let them air dry.
• Plonk them in a cool bath with vinegar in it (tried this when she was very small in her old plastic bath in the middle of the lounge).  It seemed to help a little.
• Medicate.  Alternate between Paracetamol (Calpol, Panado etc) and whatevers in Neurofen/Ponstan/Ponstal every 3/4 hours (depending on the age of your kid).  As sucky as it can be to administer, suppositories have always worked best for us – you get these with the same ingredients allowing you to alternate them with the same sort of time frame).
• If they have a fever for more than a day check it out at the Doctor.  Paying a little bit of money for peace of mind and possibly saving them from something that you could have prevented is not even a question for me, even if it means we have bread and water for the rest of the month.

Do you have any other tried and tested methods to reduce a fever?  Please share them in the comments!