As far as thermometers are concerned I don’t know if my approach is paranoid or it is a normal behavior.
When my son was two months old we started the path through vaccines.
Talking about side-effects there is a problem I was not keen to approach the conventional way: the fever.
Everyone, doctors included, told us that we should control our son in the first 24-48 hours after the vaccine. What they said is that we should have checked if he had fever.
Easier said than done!
How am I supposed to measure the temperature to a little baby that keeps moving and completely relies on me, without terryfing him?
The answer is straigthforward: take a rectal thermometer, immobilize your son and check the temperature from time to time…what!!!??? I’m sorry but I completely disliked the idea of torturing my son only to prevent some eventual problem.
Luckily enough a friend talked to me about: ThermoFocus
http://www.tecnimed.it/thermofocus_persaperne.html
The ThermoFocus thermometer measures infra-red emissions from every object is focused toward. Infra-red emission is related to the temperature of the object.
In this way this thermometer can calculate the temperature emitted by the object. The same is true for a human body. When you want to measure the temperature of your son you simply need to grab ThermoFocus and handle it close to his forehead (you don’t need to touch his forehead). The temperature is measured almost immediately.
On the web site you can find detailed instructions in order to use it properly. The instructions are super-easy. The only thing you must consider is that, given the measurement method, this thermometer is able to react to little variations in temperature between different areas of your body.
Moreover the ‘normal’ temperature can vary from person to person. For those reasons it’s strongly suggested to take a set of measurements on all family members when you’re not ill. In this way you can understand what is your ‘normal’ temperature (usually measured in the middle of the forehead).
Once you’ve done this calibration with your son, you will be able to check if the temperature is rising in a couple of seconds at any time. You only need to put the thermometer close to the centre of his forehead and the display will show the measured temperature.
All of this will happen with no tears nor torments for your son. We used it widely and I’m completely satisfied about it.
To be completely safe we bought a traditional thermometer too so that we can double check if needed: once that Thermofocus measures a temperature increase you can always think to measure it also with the traditional thermometer but only in those rare cases.
Summarizing: Thermofocus helped avoiding many Alessandro’s tears. I must admit that measured temperatures often differ from the ones measured with the traditional thermometer but Thermofocus never missed a temperature increase. Then we never failed to realize when any of our sons was going to have fever.
Lately our 3 years old toddler considers Thermofocus a toy and enjoys using it to measure the temperature of his 8 months old brother.