Friendly reminder--keep medicines out of your child's reach!

[DebbieJ]

Just a friendly reminder--I know that we are all vigilant parents and most likely have all medicines pur away out of child's reach. But we also have resourceful kids. :)

Twice this week my DS has gotten a hold of medicine with child proof caps and OPENED THEM! Once it was a bottle of adult ibuprofen tablets and the second was a bottle of liquid children's ibuprofen. DS pushed a chair up the counter and got in the cabinet, where I thought they were safe and out of his reach. Thank goodness both times I was right there and caught him before he could ingest anything.

Now I will be relocating those meds and contacting WalMart (they were both Equate brand) about these things!

~ deb
DS born at home 12/03
Breastfeeding After Reduction is possible! www.bfar.org

http://www.bfar.org/members/fora/style_avatars/Ribbons/18months-bfar.jpg

[kimbe]

Great reminder.

I'm glad that nothing bad happened!

Also wanted to add that you should never put a medicine (or anything hazardous)in a secondary container. The secondary container isn't likely to have improtant ingestion or safety information on it that you (or someone else) would need in an emergency!

[dules]

Good reminder, Debbie, and I'm so glad nothing happened to DS.

For parents of young infants, here's one I didn't think of till it happened to us. We kept Purell on the elevated part of our changing table, far from infant DD's reach (she was under 3 months). We'd Purell our hands after changing a dirty diaper, it was easy and convenient to have it there.

One night DH pushed on the pump and the Purell shot out, not down, and right into DD's eyes. I flushed them with water right away, we spent hours in the ER where they flushed them again with saline, and we had to see a specialist the next day to check for damage. Fortunately there was none - but we learned our lesson about keeping anything like that on the changing table.

Thanks for the thread, Debbie. I always forget to post this but it's a good reminder.


Mary

[kimbe]

OMG, how awful! I am so sorry that you had to go through that!

Thanks for sharing --- definitely something we should pay attention too!

[writermama]

Another thing to be aware of, guests to your home might not be as aware about keeping potentially hazardous things out of reach. For example, women frequently leave their purses on the floor without thinking about the contents (travel size meds, small choke hazards, etc.) or the curious fingers eager to explore them.

Houseguests might leave medicines and toiletries in open suitcases.

[randomkid]

Yep...and even someone with kids. I never even noticed this kind of thing until DD came along. The day after Thanksgiving we had some friends over. About 30 minutes after they were here, I noticed our friend's purse sitting on the floor open. Her DD is almost 5 years old, so I'm sure she just doesn't even think about things like that anymore. I briefly had a silent freakout moment hoping DD hadn't gotten anything out of there!

[SnuggleBuggles]

That happened to me (not ds). It hurt so much. I can only imagine how a baby felt. Poor baby. :(

We had our own diaper table incident. The changing table was within reach of ds' crib, so close that he learned how to climb out of his crib and onto it one day. We found him covered in some diaper cream (Hyland's brand so not as many chemicals) and it slathered all over the place. Lesson learned. Diaper stuff went in the linen closet from then on. :) I share that story with all my friends that have diaper stuff in the room with their toddler.

Thank you OP for the reminder.

Beth

[maestramommy]

Thanks for this reminder. We keep DD's meds (Tylenol, Advil, vitamins) on the changing table, and she is forever grabbing them. We usually just let her play with them because she can't unscrew caps yet, and she just like chewing on the rubber squeezer, in retrospect, that probably isn't a good idea so now they're in our medicine cabinet.

[DrSally]

Yikes! So sorry that happened! I've kept the purell (for the same purpose) on the top of the changing table b/c I heard that rubbing alcohol is toxic to ingest, but maybe I should even keep it off the changing table as well.

And to OP, thanks for the reminder. We will be visiting relatives soon who take a lot of pills, and many leave them loose on the counter. I've been trying to think of a nice way to ask them not to do this (who knows it could fall on the floor or what not).

[JTsMom]

Always a good reminder. I swear, I'm not making this up... when Jason was pretty young- maybe 9 mos?- he figured out that he could throw things up in the air to knock things off of the counter! He knocked a bottle of my thyroid pills down, and I freaked thinking what could have happened if I hadn't been standing there and seen it.

[amp]

That same thing happened to us at Gymboree Play class once. We flushed his eye immediately and ended up not taking him to the hospital, but it was scary!