The title says it all, poor thing. We can't feel the tooth ourselves, but she's showing all other signs.
She's generally ok during the day, sometimes showing some signs of discomfort and chewing on her hands a lot, but once evening rolls around, she'll shriek and it's obvious she's in pain. She's chomping on our fingers a lot. Those seem to be her favorite teething soothers.
I have a bunch of the standard chew toys in the fridge, but most of them are too big for her to get into her mouth well enough to really soothe her gums.
Sometimes she's just kind of chewing on the nipple of her bottle instead of really eating so I thought I'd be all ingenious and make bottle chew toys for her. I took a bunch of the bottles that we had previously rejected for feeding, filled the nipples with breast milk, and then froze them upside down in an ice cube tray to catch drips. Yeaaaaaaah, she didn't like that. She recognized the bottle as a feeding instrument and got irritated that milk wasn't coming out. She didn't catch on that she was meant to just chew on the nipple. Oh well. The best laid plans....
I took all the little nipple shaped breast milk ice cubes and put them in a baggie so I can wrap them in a cloth and let her chew on that. She does like the rags that I dipped in breast milk and then froze. Some of them have half a dose of baby Tylenol mixed in.
I read that baby orajel isn't a good idea because it numbs the throat and dulls the gag reflex. Too bad, because it seemed to help before I read that. K smeared half the recommended dose around the base of a pacifier because it wasn't sticking to her gums when he tried to apply it per the directions. I'm not throwing the stuff out, but I'll only use it as a last resort if she's in real pain and we can't find anything else to help her. If we use it, she'll sleep in her car seat so that if she spits up, it will either dribble out, or back down into her tummy as opposed to having spit up sitting in her throat choking her.
I'm not sure what else to do for her. I'm open to ideas knowing that I'll be dealing with this for a while and with 2 kids. What doesn't work today might work tomorrow so I'd love to collect an arsenal of ideas.
My son, Cedric, liked chewing on frozen wash cloths and also my fingers too!
ReplyDeleteI also bought TONS of chew toys for him and he would not take to ANY of them!! It was so frustrating!
He never took a bink but now that he has a lot of his teeth he has now gotten a fleating off and on interests with binks
http://www.amazon.com/Munchkin-Fresh-Food-Feeder-1ea/dp/B0009ET93Q/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
ReplyDeleteMy Sister used that not as a feeder but a teething toy, she would put an ice cube in it (ice chips maybe for the younger ones?). There's another brand that's similar to that one by Sassy.
My parents did the old fashion touch of whiskey on the gums for my little brother and sister (not sure about me...?) They stopped that when my brother was a year, year and a half old and he started pointing to the bottle on top of the fridge going "guh! guh! guh!" LOL, times have changed!
My parents too did the rum or whiskey treatment and sometimes put it on the nipple of the bottle too.
ReplyDeleteI bought a 'Sophie giraffe', which I can see working with other babies that have better hand/mouth coordination, alas not mine. As for the orajel - seriously, I've used it with all of my babies and I've never heard anything about 'throat numbing'. I think you'd need to give them a shitload before that happened. Still, it's up to you, whatever you feel comfortable doing.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, my health visitor told me not to let babies sleep in car seats, as it's not good for their hip development, plus they can overheat. of course, that was 10 years ago with my first, so perhaps it's okay now?. I can't keep up.
For our son we did not use orajel because I read that it can toughen the gums and make teething last longer, which sounded like pure hell to me. We used pure vanilla extract on his gums instead. Hylands teething tablets are also amazing and worked wonders. He also wore an amber teething necklace that helped a ton, at least IMO. Frozen fruit in a mesh feeder helped some, and baby tylenol as a very last resort when he was just miserable. Hope that helps!
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