Ah October! You greet us in Beijing with a weeklong holiday, a screwy work schedule, and the promise of blue skies and pleasant weather. This past National Day holiday was no different except that half the days were filled with the promise of overcast days with a layer of good old hazardous particulate matter that forced those of us on staycations to blockade ourselves indoors and blast the air filters.
All of that might not have been so bad if mid-holiday, and without any of our usual domestic assistance from our crew of ayis, our family got food poisoning. Whereas this made our 6 year old listless and quiet, it made the 1-year-old twins cranky, tired, and characters out of a horror film with the amount of vomiting that went on.
In the quest for knowledge about what to do to counteract the forces of dehydration that were attacking the kids at both ends (a first for us since Reina had never been so ill before), I was reminded of the excellent article that Dr. Melissa Rodriguez wrote for Beijing Kids Magazine in 2010 on the stomach flu (Dr. Mom, Natural Ways to Beat Stomach Flu). In the article, Dr. Rodriguez provided simple home recipes for making your own oral rehydration solution (via the World Health Organization), ginger tea to combat nausea in little ones, and simple foods, such as congee, once they are able to keep the fluids down. It is a great article and worth reviewing this time of year so that when the demons of tummy woes strike at your babies, you will know exactly what to do and, hopefully, save yourself from the trouble of a trip to the doctor.
Photo courtesy of likablerodent (flickr)