Yesterday I got a message from my friend, Amanda, asking me, “Riana, how do you stop hiccups?!!! Please…urgent!”
Amanda is a mother of a one year old baby boy. She asked me lots of questions but the one she asked me yesterday kind of made me surprised. She didn’t know how to stop hiccups?
Then I decided to call her to find out what really happened, who got the hiccups…
It was her baby boy. She got panic since he didn’t stop hiccupping for more than 3 minutes. Normally, she could call her Mom who lived next door. But, at that time her Mom seemed to be away.
I asked her if she:
- had told her son to hold his breath (instead of answering my question she asked me back, “How can I tell a one year old to hold breath?!!!”). Oops…
- gave him water to drink (she did, about two glasses!)
- tried to frighten him (she said, “What!!!” and I said, “It’s one of the remedies I know that might work.” she said again, “Well, isn’t it making it worse if he gets frightened and cries and I have to deal with his hiccups and cry?!!!” then I sighed)
- told her son to pull his tongue (her reaction was almost similar to #1)
- gave smelling salt for him to inhale (she said she didn’t have any smelling salt, me? I sighed again)
- put corn syrup (for adult, it’s dry sugar) on the back of his tongue (she seemed to be excited with this one and I had no more idea what to do if this one failed, too)
Then, the next 10 minutes, she sent me another message…saying, “Hi, thanks so much. The corn syrup worked well!”
Thank God!
‘Cause if it didn’t work and the baby kept hiccupping for the next 3 hours, I should have brought the panic mother and the hiccupping baby to the hospital!
PS: This hiccupping thing reminds me of an episode of Alf, a TV show back in the 80’s. Alf, the furry little alien, got bad bad bad hiccups. And, according to an encyclopedia of his planet, the remedies are either drinking cat juice or eat spinach. But hey, those are only for aliens! 
