Go read the Disclaimer again. I am not a doctor. This is not medical advice. Seriously.
There's some research out there that purports to demonstrate that (a) teething pain is overrated and (b) teething does not cause low fever, excessive drooling, inflammation, etc.
Whatever.
That said, I know people who have attributed to teething some fairly dire symptoms that were clearly something else (imo, food allergies, but it was thirty some odd years ago, so hard to know at this late date). I can understand that pediatricians don't want people saying oh, it's just teething when it's something that could be addressed more effectively if correctly identified. OTOH, since the same baby docs are just going to deny the food allergies anyway, my sympathy is limited. If it is a virus, they aren't going to do anything, and a bacterial infection is vastly unlikely. As noted above, whatever.
Teddy first started gumming and gnawing and drooling at around four months. His father had gotten his first tooth around then (prompting grandma to wean him, a decision she made differently -- and later -- with his younger siblings). A number of women believed this meant teething, but no teeth actually appeared for quite a number of weeks. The two on the bottom were the first to appear, followed a few weeks later by the matching ones up top. The two on either side of the middle on top appeared during our June 2006 trip back east, when Teddy was around 9 and a half months old. He started biting down on my breast for those, which I was slow to realize meant serious teething, and resulted in a nursing strike. Note to self: don't be a stupid mama, even if you are distracted by planning a cross-country trip.
Child care likes to deploy wet rags, twisted and then frozen. He tends to keep one of these in the freezer, but he never replaces it, so there is never one there for me. Eventually, I put a bowl in the freezer and filled it with these little twists. The bowl also contains three plastic teethers of various shapes. I try to rinse them off before giving them to Teddy, in hopes this will keep them from being too cold, and to keep the germs down. This is delusional, as I'm relatively sure no one else consistently does this.
The rags are cloth wipes, which neither R. nor I really uses on Teddy any more, because the sink is so much more convenient, and it's far easier to clean our hands than it is to clean cloth wipes. Also, the hands are always available, unlike the cloth wipes, which are sometimes all in the wash already because child care still uses them sometimes.
We have a number of wooden teething toys, including one wooden teething ring with a little blue doll attached (Kathe Kruse, IIRC), which is nice because Teddy can alternate between fabric and wood. Another wooden teether (with amber beads, which are completely inaccessible to teeth, which now strikes me as silly) can be put on Teddy's wrist. This is good, as it gives him something to chew on other than himself. It irritates him, tho, and he takes it off as soon as he can get it off. We also have a silver rattle from Tiffany's (this is much more worthwhile than you might think, and has the dents to prove use) with a teething ring on one end. Despite all these teethers, Teddy will reliably teeth on himself, us, the furniture and anything else in sight (or out of sight that he can get his sticky little hands on. Sticky from drool).
A number of friends swear by clove oil. I initially attempted clove oil undiluted, applied to the gum with my finger. This made Teddy madder at me than I've ever seen him. He sulked for a good while afterwards and wouldn't look at me. Child care put a few drops of clove oil in water, soaked a rag in it, and gave that to Teddy. That worked relatively well. When Teddy was older, he was much more tolerant of less diluted clove oil.
Baby Tylenol (dosage available in Dr. Sears' Baby Book or Dr. Sears' website) improved life for all of us. Teddy recognized the bottle after the first round or two, and would stare at it and eventually grab for it (gotta watch those lunges from in-arms on the couch to the end table) when he wanted some. We were a little surprised that he seemed to recognize what it was for. He didn't ask for it every day, or demand more and more (which one might expect if he just wanted it for the sweetness); just on days when he was really chewing on everything.
The ingredients in Anbusol frightened me. However, during the nursing strike, I did resort to baby benzocaine (Baby Orajel, Baby Teethers, etc.). I've never seen anything work so fast in my life.
Honestly, I see no particular difference between drool at four months and drool at ten months. Some days are droolier than others, but that seems more connected to sneezing than to teething. Parents with slightly older babies were convinced we'd be amazed at the increase in drool. Whatever.
Copyright 2006 by Rebecca Allen.
Created June 26, 2006 Updated June 26, 2006