It is 12:45am, the drops are prescribed, and every single one has come straight back out of his mouth. You are not getting this wrong. A six-week-old spitting out medicine is almost always a problem of where the liquid lands and how fast it arrives — not a baby refusing treatment.
The fix is unglamorous: swap the dropper for an oral syringe, aim at the inside of his cheek instead of the middle or back of his mouth, and deliver it in three or four tiny pushes with a swallow between each one, holding him upright.
Not medical advice — follow your paediatrician's instructions for your baby's medicine.
Why the dropper is losing
The dropper taped to the box is built to measure, not to deliver. It drops one fat bead onto the middle of the tongue — exactly where a newborn's tongue is best at pushing things out.
An oral syringe has a narrow tip you can slip into the side of the mouth, and a plunger you control millimetre by millimetre. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) says an oral syringe is usually the most accurate dosing tool, especially for amounts of less than 5 ml, and that teaspoons, tablespoons and other household spoons should never be used to measure medicine.
| What you reach for | Why it works, or doesn't |
|---|---|
| Oral syringe (1 ml or 2 ml) | Narrow tip reaches the cheek pocket; plunger lets you go in stages |
| Dropper from the box | Fine for measuring, clumsy for delivery — one big drop onto the tongue |
| Katori and spoon | Spills, and you cannot tell how much actually went in |
Any chemist will hand you a graduated oral syringe for a few rupees — ask for an oral dosing syringe, not an injection syringe with the needle removed.
The technique, step by step
Do this in good light, sitting down, with a muslin on your shoulder.
- Pick your moment. Great Ormond Street Hospital's NHS advice on giving children medicines notes that there is no harm in leaving a dose for an hour if your child is upset. Mid-scream is the worst possible time — a wide-open, bawling mouth has no suction and no swallow. Settle him first, even partly.
- Measure at eye level. Draw up exactly the dose your paediatrician prescribed and check the mark against the light.
- Hold him upright, head supported. The AAP's care advice for a child refusing medicine is explicit: the child's position should be sitting up, never lying down. Semi-upright in your lap, cradled in the crook of your elbow, works well at six weeks.
- Go in at the corner of the mouth, not the front. Great Ormond Street Hospital's guidance on liquid medicines advises putting the tip of the oral syringe inside the mouth between the gums and the inside surface of the cheek, with the child sitting upright — then gently pushing small amounts into the side of the mouth and letting them swallow before you carry on pushing the plunger. The same leaflet warns that squirting the entire dose in one go may make a child choke.
- Aim for the cheek pocket. The AAP's care advice is that medicine must not be squirted into the back of the throat, because it can enter the windpipe and cause choking — you can aim for the pouch inside the cheek instead. That pocket between cheek and gum is a reservoir he cannot easily push liquid out of.
- Three or four pushes, not one. A quarter of the dose, wait for the swallow, then the next quarter — that staged rhythm is exactly what the Great Ormond Street leaflet describes. A dummy or a clean finger offered between pushes often prompts the swallow for you.
- Follow with a feed or a cuddle, not a wrestle. If the last quarter is a fight, stop. A Mersey and West Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS leaflet is clear that a child should never be forced to take medication, because it makes the next time harder, and that if a child is very upset you should wait a short while and try again. Pinning him down, holding his jaw shut or blocking his nose is not a technique — it is how you end up with a baby who fights the syringe for a fortnight.
A thin dribble at the corner of his lip is normal and does not mean the dose is gone. Wipe it and carry on.
Three things not to do tonight
Do not top up a full bottle with the dose. This is the most tempting shortcut at 1am and the one worth skipping. A Kingston and Richmond NHS Foundation Trust leaflet on giving a newborn oral medicine is direct: give your baby the whole dose, and do not add the dose to a bottle that is already full. If he drops off after 60 ml of a 120 ml bottle, nobody — not you, not your paediatrician in the morning — knows how much medicine he actually had. The AAP adds that you should check with your child's doctor or pharmacist before mixing a medicine with food or liquid at all, since not every medicine can be mixed.
Do not force it, and do not block his nose. Holding the nose is the escalation an exhausted parent reaches for at 1am, and it works against you: a Mersey and West Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS leaflet says plainly that a child should never be forced to take medication, and that it is best not to force the child into submission. The whole aim of the cheek-pocket method is to keep liquid away from the airway, which is why the AAP warns against the back of the throat in the first place.
Do not give a second dose because you think he spat the first one out. You genuinely cannot tell by looking whether he got none of it, half of it, or nearly all of it, and a repeat guessed at in the dark is a real risk. The AAP's medication-safety guidance states that you should not give two doses at the same time or extra doses without speaking to your doctor, and that if you are unsure about giving a dose you should check with your doctor or pharmacist. Write down the time and what you saw, and ask in the morning.
When to stop troubleshooting and ring the paediatrician
If the dose simply will not go in after a couple of honest attempts, that is information your prescriber needs — not a failure to hide. The AAP lists not being able to get your child to take the medicine as a reason to call the doctor, and the Mersey and West Lancashire leaflet points out that your pharmacist can also help if you are having trouble giving a medicine. There may be a different formulation, a different timing, or a five-minute demonstration in the clinic.
The crying itself has its own thresholds. The NHS advises ringing 111 or seeing a GP if you are worried about your baby's crying, if nothing seems to be working, if you are finding it hard to cope, or if your baby is not growing or putting on weight as expected — and seeking immediate care for a weak or high-pitched cry, or a cry that does not sound like your baby's normal cry. In India, that means your paediatrician's after-hours number or your hospital's paediatric casualty.
Whether colic drops do much at six weeks is a separate question; we go through the evidence in our guide to anti-colic drops and gripe water. For the crying itself, see colic and the witching hour. Tonight's question is narrower, and it has an answer: syringe, cheek, small amounts, upright.
