It Costs $10. Parents Have No Idea They'll Need It.

Giving babies medicine can feel like a struggle, similar to how cats resist pills. Liquid medicine is often administered with a syringe, and wrapping the baby can help reduce mess and movement. A key difference is that babies have a suck reflex that supports feeding and pacifiers. Medicine pacifiers combine a pacifier with a syringe delivery system, pushing liquid medicine into the baby’s mouth through a small opening. These devices are inexpensive and can make dosing easier by largely removing the struggle, functioning like pill pockets for pets. Brands include Frida Accu-Dose Paci and Dr. Brown’s Pacidose.

"Babies take medicine (antibiotics for an ear infection; Tylenol for a fever) in liquid form, dispensed into their mouth via syringe, which cats do sometimes too. When it comes to felines and liquid meds, PetMD recommends both using a "burrito wrap" and having an assistant. This also kinda sorta works for babies. If you're lucky, not too much of the medicine will wind up dripping down your adorable creature's chin."

"There is, however, a key difference between babies and cats that you can exploit to your advantage: Babies are born with a "suck reflex," which is how they know to breastfeed or bottle-feed, and why they like pacifiers. And it turns out there's an ingenious, inexpensive little invention that combines the pacifier with the medicine syringe."

"It's called different things depending on the brand-we have the Frida Accu-Dose Paci-but there's also Dr. Brown's Pacidose, as well as other options that are findable by searching "baby medicine pacifier." They are all about $10 to $15 and involve pushing medicine into your baby's mouth via a small hole in the paci, more or less completely removing the struggle. They are to babies as pill pockets are to pets."

"Ours is one of those things I didn't know I needed but now would, no questions asked, pay $100 if someone decided to kidnap it (and, I guess, all the other medical pacis in the world?) and demand a ransom. We got it in a box of other cute little"

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