This mom’s medicine hack is going viral for a very good reason

A sick baby is not a cooperative baby. They don’t feel good, they don’t understand why and they certainly don’t want you to force a piece of plastic into their mouth—even if you have good intentions of helping them feel better with medicine.

But a mom in the United Kingdom is sharing an ingenious way to help the medicine go down. (No spoonful of sugar necessary.)

When her infant son, Alfie, came down with a fever, Helena Lee was frustrated trying to get him to swallow some CALPOL, a British medicine brand similar to Tempra or Tylenol. As a nursery practitioner with the National Health Service, Lee knew how dangerous a fever could be for a baby Alfie’s age, and was desperate to get his temperature down. Unfortunately, Alfie just wouldn’t accept that little plastic syringe that comes with the vial of baby medicine.

“I was putting it in his mouth [and] he was just spitting it out, but if I tried to squirt it straight down he would gag and be sick,” Lee tells Motherly.

That’s when she remembered the hack she’d seen somewhere on social media—she doesn’t remember exactly where–and placed the little plastic plunger in the nipple of one of Alfie’s bottles before trying to dose him.

“I was getting a bit desperate, so decided anything was worth a shot,” she recalls.

It worked like a charm and Alfie took his medicine through the nipple without a fuss.

Eager to share her discovery with other moms, Lee posted a picture of the incredibly simple hack to Facebook, and the post has now been shared hundreds of thousands of times.

“I’m completely gobsmacked, it’s madness,” says Lee, whose notifications have been blowing up. “I thought it would perhaps help out a few of my personal friends on Facebook. I never in a million years expected it to go this crazy!”

Gone crazy it has because this hack is crazy simple—and the perfect secret weapon for parents dealing with a baby who doesn’t understand how much that medicine will help.

Hopefully this nipple trick will help frustrated moms and fussy babies feel better soon.