My child is feeling sick. What should I do?
If a child feels like a vomiting, I think the first thing you want to do is not to overload their stomach. Try to give the stomach a rest. Initially, don't give them anything to eat and don't give them anything to drink, just for a couple of hours, just to see if it settles. If it does, fine; if it doesn't, the chances are it is going to progress into vomiting. If the child is vomiting, then that means they are losing fluid and you need to start replacing that fluid. It is very important that you replace that fluid slowly. If a child is vomiting and drinks a whole glass of water, the chances are that within the next half an hour, they're going to vomit that back up again. It needs to be sips at a time - just a couple of sips every few minutes, every 5 minutes or so. It will help replace the fluid and at the same time not put too much strain on the stomach. If the vomiting is very severe, then the child may not be able to retain fluids, in which case you need to begin to judge whether the child is becoming dehydrated or not. This is a very important issue because if the child is dehydrated, they need to go to the hospital. Look at the child's tongue and see if the tongue is dry, and feel the skin to check if it feels dry and sometimes soggy, and watch the urine output. If the child is not passing urine, they're obviously dehydrated. If they're passing plenty of urine, I think the chances of dehydration are not very high. These are just some simple measures and some simple things to keep an eye on, to try to evaluate whether it's serious or not serious, and whether the child needs to go to the hospital or not.
