Is your baby struggling with new teeth coming through? We’ve another guest on the blog today – Lorraine from Squeaky Baby - talking about the trials and tribulations of caring for your baby during teething troubles.
Teething, eh? What can I say about teething that hasn’t been said a thousand times already, by people far more eloquent than me? The troubles that accompany those first pearly whites are the stuff of nightmares for parents, or at least they would be, if only we could sleep in the first place…
What works for one baby isn’t necessarily going to work for another. I couldn’t possibly recommend any one product or approach, it’s a case of trial and error, and finding what suits your child. We tried most things - gels, powders, teething rings, teething necklaces, painkillers - with varying degrees of success. I think we got through the worst of teething before the amber teething necklaces and bracelets really hit the market, so we didn’t get chance to try one of them out, though pretty much everything else came into our house (and my handbag).
It’s horrible, it really is, watching your baby in pain, when there’s nothing you can do to take that pain away. You’ve tried everything, and they’re still there crying their little eyes out. We ended up with a mix and match approach, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, depending on time of day, and which tooth is causing the problem. And that was a problem in itself. More than once I’d been treating one tooth, which I thought was the one that was growing, and then a completely different one appeared instead! Oh, that did nothing for my parenting ego.
Then those pearly whites need brushing. Luckily, the range of baby toothpastes and toothbrushes on the market now seem to meet most preferences. I tried one of the finger brushes, but it didn’t go down well, though they’re meant to be good for babies who chew the brush (which Squeaky does, a lot). One thing I’ve found that’s really worked for us is letting her help brush, from a very early age. Initially I’d let her “brush” my teeth, now she brushes her own – after I’ve made sure they’re brushed properly, of course.
Once they’re through, and brushed regularly, they need to be checked over. Our dentist’s great, he put her at ease, let her sit on my lap while he had a little peek at her teeth, just to get used to the idea as much as anything. Children’s check-ups and treatments are free on the NHS, if you can find an NHS dentist, that is. We’re lucky in that respect, and if parents are NHS patients, they accept children onto the NHS list too, even if they’re not taking other new patients.
And now, just as we thought we were almost at the end of the teething cycle (only one last set of molars to go), we have a whole new teething pain in our house. Squeaky’s 21 months old now, and determined to conquer the world around her. She was playing last week, with both me and daddy supervising, when she slipped and knocked her face on, well, I’m not even sure what. And managed to break one of her front teeth.
An emergency dentist phone call confirmed we shouldn’t panic, only a tiny bit of bleeding which stopped in minutes, and she hadn’t swallowed the tooth or anything. Off to the dentist the following morning, and another appointment next week, for him to seal the edge of the tooth, but Squeaky’s got herself a new nickname – Fang. They can’t fix it, just make sure it doesn’t get any worse.
Once I got over the initial shock (and yes, I was probably worse than her), I realised it happens. Clearly, it just had. We can’t wrap our little ones up in cotton wool, and they will hurt themselves no matter how much we try to protect them. But we’ve just got to do the best job we can in looking after them, and teach our children to look after themselves, teeth included.
