Homeopathy is a god-send for many parents. It works beautifully for things like colic, digestive difficulties, eczema, cradle cap, discomfort during teething and more. But giving babies homeopathic remedies requires some special attention.

First, what form of medicine should you give them?

Homeopathic medicines can be dosed in solid form (generally pellets, but sometimes tablets) or in liquid form.  The advantage to pellets is that they are made from milk sugar, meaning they are sweet, so kids will usually wolf them down no problem.  I prefer liquid dosing in general, but pellets are fine if you have a picky kid. For babies, pellets and tablets are a choking hazard and so should generally be avoided.  Babies younger than 6 months may not want any solid put in their mouth anyway.

Dosing with liquid can be done in a few basic ways, but the first step for all is to make a liquid preparation, or in other words you just add some pellets to some water. 

Special considerations for giving babies liquid doses

Firstly, if you have made a liquid preparation that is stabilized with alcohol (which I often do), then you will want to make a solution without alcohol every day.  So let’s say you put two pellets of Belladonna in a 2oz bottle of a 40% water, 60% vodka solution.  You don’t necessarily want to give your infant more than a drop or two of this alcoholic solution.  So you can take one drop (or if it’s not in a dropper bottle, a ¼ tsp) and put it in a glass.  Add water and then give your infant a dose of this second preparation. 

However, babies, in particular newborns, are not always a fan of swallowing liquids that you put in their mouth.  Until at least four months they have a few reflexes that make putting anything in their mouth difficult: the tongue lateralization reflex and the tongue thrust reflex.  The tongue thrust reflex means that when the tip of the tongue is touched, the tongue pushes outwards, forcing anything in the mouth out again.  Most believe this is to prevent choking; if something falls in the baby’s mouth, the baby just pushes it out with its tongue.  The tongue lateralization reflex means if you touch the side of the tongue, the tongue will move towards that side. This means if you try and put a dropper in their mouth, they’ll likely push it, and any liquid you dropped into their mouth, out. 

Now, because some of the liquid touches the mucus membranes of the tongue and cheek, the baby will get some of the dose.  The problem is that if some of the dose dribbles out, the baby won’t get the whole dose.  This also means the baby will get a slightly larger or smaller or dose each day.  Sometimes this doesn’t matter much, but for some sensitive babes, that could mean their symptoms are present some days, gone other days.  With my son, I found this particularly tricky when giving him a remedy for teething – all the drool from teething meant it took a lot of finagling to make sure the whole dose got in.  And if I screwed up, well I had a very unhappy teething child for the rest of the day!

If your baby is sensitive to taste and doesn’t want something that is as plain as water, you can sweeten the water preparation with maple syrup, or add the water preparation to another liquid like juice or milk.

Dosing in a bottle:

The easiest method is if your baby gets a bottle (or glass of water or other liquid if they are older) every day.  Just add the required dose to the bottle/cup.  HOWEVER, make sure the bottle has an amount of liquid you know the baby will drink.  If you fill it with 3mL and the baby decides they are done after 1mL, then the baby will only get a portion of their dose.  I recommend putting the dose in a small taster amount, like 1ml and then after the baby finishes that, you can fill the bottle up with the rest of their meal. 

Dosing by drops: two methods

Basically the trick I came up with was getting a 1 ml plastic syringe.  With a 1 mml syringe, I could draw out exactly the number of drops (1 drop =  0.05ml) and then insert the syringe into babe’s mouth.  Because of the reflexes you want to try and stick to the baby’s cheek and avoid the tongue if you can.  Then when you are up against the cheek, just push on the syringe plunger slowly enough that the liquid is then swallowed by the babe.  This way you can easily give 1 drop, 3 drops, 10 drops, however much you need.

If you only have a traditional dropper, then the best way I found to dose is to squeeze the dropper slightly, so a drop is dangling at the edge of the dropper.  Then put the dropper on the inside of the baby’s lip and the drop will dribble into their mouth.  Just “dropping” the liquid into a baby’s mouth is a game of chance that I often lost at 6 am in the dark. 

There are also pacifiers with syringes built into them.  If your kid likes the pacifier, this is one way to give them liquid doses.

Dosing by tsp/tbs

Start with your liquid preparation (with water, not the alcohol mixture if you have one) and then just take out the required number of teaspoons or tablespoons.  To dose your infant, you can bring the spoon to their bottom lip, the same as if they were going to drink from it. 

Conclusion:

When dosing babies, your goal is to give them a small amount of liquid safely.  Generally this means putting the pellets or alcohol solution into a glass of water, and then measuring out a portion of that water to give to the babe.  You can do this with droppers, syringes, or putting it into a bottle, cup or pacifier, depending on your baby’s preferences and age.