Why give Tylenol and Motrin?

PenguinGirl06

I noticed in Chrissy's post that a few of you mentioned giving a feverish/sick baby both meds. ?I have no idea about this stuff, so I was wondering what this does and do you dose it at the same time or how many hours apart? ?TIA!

EDIT: Sorry about my poor grammar in my original post title- Ben needed my attention and I was typing quickly...?

Inlove05

The theory is that a combination of Tylenol and Motrin, in alternating doses,  would reduce a patient's temperature faster and for a longer time than either one alone.  You should alternate every two hours.  Give motrin and then two hours later tylenol.   BUT, you should always check with your ped first!

maisiemae

For really high fevers, that are not staying down with one or the other, you can alternate Tylenol and Motrin every 3 hours. ?They work differently in the body, so you can't overdose that way, and that still keeps the Motrin doses 6 hrs apart.

?

Mindy-lou

Not all Dr's recommend it & they may have different periods of time between meds, so you would want to check w/ Ben's pedi first.

 http://www.pediatrichealthcarebrockton.com/fever.asp

PenguinGirl06

Thanks, everyone! ?I would def. check with the pedi first. ?Luckily, Ben has never had a fever over 100 (yet), so that's why I don't know these things!

harvest-wed

what we were told tonight was that if one hour after Tylenol his fever wasn't down that I could give Motrin, probably cuz the fever was SOO high, (she felt 104 was too high for an 8 month old. - she wanted to make sure that I was able to control the fever) that we could to motrin to make sure the fever came down and then after that give the next dose of Tylenol when approrpiate according to instuctions. 

Before my call, I the bad mommy gave him another dose of Tylenol after only 3 hours cuz his fever was 104.3 she said I shouldn't have and should have given him Motrin, which I had, but was upstairs and i was panicking. 

she also said those medications work in different ways

 BUT

He had Very high fevers 2.5 weeks ago and they never mentioned alternating Tylenol and Motrin, they seemed much less concerned last time but probably cuz then it spiked right after our appt, so the doc had just seen him and did not see any bad symptoms

(the other thing I learned was too start out the bath regular temp and gradually cool it down so it doesn't shock the system)

harvest-wed

It may take up to two hours before the fever-reducing medicine starts to work. If your child?s temperature is still high after one hour, wait and check the temperature again after another hour. If the temperature is still high after two hours, it will be too soon to give the medicine you gave earlier. If you gave Tylenol earlier, you could now give Motrin/Advil and if you gave Motrin/Advil earlier, you could now given Tylenol

 

The above is a blurb from the site Mindy recommended

 

WideSmileMama

I was told to do the combination of the two only if one of them on its own does not do the trick to effectively reduce a fever - not to automatically do the combination.