How to get your toddler to do a breathing treatment?

If you read this post, then you know that day one of Jackson's breathing treatments were terrible. Seriously, I felt like a failure as I sat in the pediatrician's office giving Jackson his first test treatment.

The nurses had me practice giving Jackson a treatment to see how we "handled it". I mean, how hard could it be, right?!? WRONG. It was a test, and we didn't do so hot. I'd say we failed, but they let us go home, so I guess we passed with a D.

I was not able to keep Jackson calm or even console him what.so.ever. When I say that Jackson lost his shit, he LOST IT! It took me and TWO nurses to hold down all 29 pounds of toddler. Talk about the longest 10 minutes.  I don't know who was more red at the end of it - me from utter embarrassment or Jackson was being so pissed off. When they turned the machine off, Jackson buried his head in my chest and passed out.

I thought for sure that Jackson would do better at home. In the quiet, with just me. We could do this, I can get my kid to do a breathing treatment, I know I can. Once again, WRONG. Mr. came in for back up, and well you saw that picture. It was torture. And I'm not sure why.  It's not like the treatment hurts in anyway.

So I called in for help, and help I got! Here's what worked:
• We let Jackson play with the machine, he turned it on and off. He played with the tube and pointed the air on us. He got comfortable with the loud noise the machine makes. I guess this made it all less scary.

• Instead of sitting quietly in his room, we sat on the couch and watched a show for distraction.

• Elmo was an awesome distraction, and we turned up the volume to drowned out the machine.

• We ditched the elastic strap around his head. It did nothing but piss Jackson off, so I just held the mask over his face.

• After the medicine was out, I let him play around with mask. He made the cutest fishy faces for us and thought he was such a big boy!

And with those little bits of advice, we had a happy boy that could breath again!

THANK YOU!!!