Identical Twins and Two Cats

I was really hoping to get away from giving either of them antibiotics for their first year.  Hence I didn’t enroll them in swimming classes (in case of ear infections) and I gave them breast milk (pumped, with formula supplement) for the first six months a la World Health Organization recommendations to pass on antibodies.

A recent Canadian study found a strong link between between antibiotic use in the first year and asthma, see http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=81720 

Done in by a toenail.  I took Angus in to see a pediatrician at the Kensington clinic and she recommended oral antibiotics as his ingrown toenail was infected and the infection had spread down to the joint.  I was tempted to leave it a couple days to see if it would clear up with soaking and topical antibiotic ointment but he was in pain. I can remember having an infected ingrown toenail and it throbbed with pain.  So we got him on them right away as the pediatrician recommended. 

Then a couple days later Kieran spiked a temp of 39.5 After speaking to an expert (my sister, an ER nurse), I also took him into the clinic.  Checked out his ears, throat, chest and all was fine so no antibiotics for Kieran. Virus is the suspect.  A couple bad nights and the fever now seems under control. 

So here we have an unintentional experiment – identical twins, one getting antibiotics first year, one not (so far).  Hopefully we will get nil results on this one!

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