Alright, MacKray (19 months) has had a fever since last night. It has been between 103 and 104 without Tylenol and once she gets a dose of Tylenol it goes down to about 101.5. How long would you other moms of older kids let it go before taking her to the doc? I'm thinking about 24 hours but want some opinions. Oh, and she is acting pretty close to normal although is very cuddly watching TV. And she has a runny nose (clear to yellowish sorry TMI) and a cough that isnt too bad sounding.

I would say you should probably be fine without going to the doctor as long as more symptoms don't appear or worsen and as long as the tylenol helps reduce the fever. If I were you, I would alternate between motrin and tylenol. That usually helps a lot more than just tylenol. Hope she feels better soon!

i would wait a day or two and take her in if it doesn't get better.

Thanks girls. That's what my mom said when I finally got ahold of her. Brandi, my ped told me not to alternate like that because if you do it every 4 hours you can OD your kid on the motrin...but who knows?!

I'm the odd-man out, I freak out when my kids fever gets to 100 and end up taking them to the ER, lol. But reasonably speaking, as long as motrin and tylenol bring it down, and no more symptoms come up, you should be ok for a day or two.

i would wait a day or two and take her in if it doesn't get better.

I agree, and alternating the motrin and tylenol is a great idea too! Could be teething, my almost 13 month old is going through that right now!

The ped. here said to give him motrin and benadryl for the cold symptoms, fever and pain!

Thanks girls. That's what my mom said when I finally got ahold of her. Brandi, my ped told me not to alternate like that because if you do it every 4 hours you can OD your kid on the motrin...but who knows?!

Well, they've always told me to do it like this:

8 am tylenol
noon motrin
2pm tylenol
6pm motrin
9pm tylenol

or something along those lines. You can do tylenol every four hours, but motrin is every 6-8. Just alternating between the two really helps if just tylenol alone doesn't.

Okay, maybe I'll have to try that because I'm not really comfortable with it sitting at 101 with meds.

Before you do it, if you're uncomfortable, try calling the nurses line or even the ped on the phone and just double check to make sure it's okay. We've been doing that with Jaxon since he was a year old or so, but you may just wanna double check since I know peds' opinions will vary. It really does help for fever AND teething though. Helped us TONS when Jaxon had really bad viruses or not being able to sleep b/c of teething.

yes i've heard you can alternate the tylenol and motrin too since you can't give motrin as often.

all 3 of mine i have done the alternateing motrin and tylenol. unfortuneately Gabe cant have motrin anymore. it's so much better at bringing a fever down and keeping it down for awhile.