Teething Remedies

I have three daughters. The first two were hardly bothered by teething. But my youngest, who is 20 months old SUFFERS badly. Tylenol, ibuprofen, cool compresses, and teething rings did nothing to ease her discomfort. Because she was waking up several times a night, obviously in pain, her doc prescribed her tylenol with codeine -- to be taken on the worst nights. It definitely helps!

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Tylenol, just enough to get her soothed. I figure I take it when my wisdom teeth occasionally start to move, so why would I deny her a little comfort when nothing else helps? Because most of the other stuff really doesn't for my youngest. We're lucky that the oldest only really gets a runny nose when teething, and that's it.

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Hyland's Homeopathic Teething Tablets work wonders for my 9-month-old son! The minute the tablets are dissolved under his tongue, his fussiness stops. =D

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I *highly* recommend the chilled celery. Cold, hard, and can reach places that most teething toys can't get to.

Hyland's Teething Tablets are THE BEST teething remedy that you can buy. (They have a gel that you should use instead if your child has a dairy sensitivity...otherwise I prefer the tablets.)

Baby sock with an ice cube tied up inside it.

Ice cube or frozen breastmilk cube inside a baby safe feeder.

Wet a washcloth and freeze it.

Massaging baby's gums with your finger. You can also try it with one of those "finger condom" infant toothbrushes.

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I always thought it sounded odd, but it worked great for my youngest baby... a green onion. Just watch him and take it away when it starts getting shredded so he doesn't choke on it. It may just be an Old Wive's tale, but something in the onion seemed to help.

My cousin swore by vanilla extract rubbed on the gums, but OMG, she'd go through a bottle a day - and it's alcohol! I swear, she was getting her babies drunk.

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Call me a bad mommy, but on really bad days I give my teething 13 month old a giant tootsie roll. I usually put it in the fridge for a while. I know it is candy, but at least he likes the way it tastes, so he will keep chewing it.

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I second the ice inside the baby feeder and Hyland's teething tablets. We also use frozen bananas and chill things like applesauce. Paul also liked to gnaw on carrots. We had a hard time because Paul had his first 12 teeth by 10 months.

Distractions also work well. We'd put Paul in the tub or go to the pool and he'd get so busy splashing that he would forget his mouth hurt for half an hour or so.

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If Nolan is waking at night it's possible he is having ear pain. Teething causes excess fluid around the ears. Try elevating the head of his mattress with a couple boards or books at one end. This should keep the drainage from flowing to his ears causing that nighttime pain.

We used infant Motrin vs infant Tylenol with teething. It lasts longer (6 hours) and takes less time to take effect (a half hour vs one hour) However we would fly through bottles like crazy. About every 5 days. Then I discovered (you can ask your pedi too) Children's Motrin (not infant motrin) can be used on infants. askdrsears.com has a great chart for age/weight of infants and dosage information for the children's pain products like tylenol and motrin. This was a little more economical for us since the children's bottles are bigger. Just ask your pharmacist for a dropper since you'll be using mL's at a time.

If the pain meds truly don't work, try Hurricane Gel. You can get it at your pharmacy counter. It is much stronger than baby orajel teething gel. It is the same concept. You rub it on the gums for a numbing sensation. Your pharmacist may need to order it from their supplier, so call in advance. You do not need a prescription to pick this up but it is held behind the counter.

Hope some of this helps. The teething will eventually end.

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what I would do is wet a washcloth and then put it in the freezer(only for a few minutes, not so it was completely frozen) and then give it to my daughter. she loved chewing on it.

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Parents have sent in a ton of good teething remedies to Parent Hacks -- here's the link.

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The wet washcloth trick, but with chilled chamomille tea. Hyland's tablets, and lots of cuddling.

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Ok, I know you are going to think I am awful for suggesting this...I have a long-time, childcare center owning friend who SWEARS by rubbing the smallest amount of cold Jack Daniels on the affected area. I have personally never needed it for any of my 4 so far, but she has 5 and needed it for a couple of them (an old New York dr's advice years back.) I am not anywhere near talking about enough to get the child drunk or anything. She has a tiny hotel-size flask she's had for years. She says she takes a paper towel or piece of clean cheese cloth and gently rubs it into the gums every once in a while when the baby is particulary cranky. She does use Motrin, too, but she absolutely swears it takes the edge off of the pain for a bit. Said the babies couldn't stand Orajel and the likes--they would actually scream more.

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Oy! Here's the link!

http://www.parenthacks.com/2006/05/baby_feeder_con.html

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Ugh, we're going through this now too. Things that have worked for us in the past just aren't cutting it now, no pun intended.

Before I soaked a washcloth in breastmilk and chilled it, used frozen breastmilk in baby safe feeder.

We couldn't do the Hyland's tabs b/c of the dairy so I'm glad to hear about the gel. And the celery sounds like a good trick, off to the grocery store now to try!

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My grandparents did the soother dipped in scotch for me. The couple of mLs is nothing, but the alcohol cools and numbs, and IMHO alcohol is safer than a lot of things like ibuprofin and orajel because its been used for hundreds of years.

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I used to keep a couple of teaspoons in the freezer. The metal gets really cold, and it has a handle they can hold onto. I think the hardness of the metal is soothing as well.

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Note that the Hyland's tablets are simply sugar pills with literally no other real ingredients.

They're "homeopathic" -- a pre-germ-theory pseudoscience that has grown into a modern scam, usually trading on the assumption/perception that homeopathy is some ancient, natural healing art. It's not -- it's from Europe in 1796. In only another hundred years, the concept of germ theory became widely understood, which should have been the end of it -- except there's a lot of money to be made in selling, like I said, sugar pills.

And "sugar pills" isn't just a slur I'm throwing around -- the Hyland's web site literally lists these teething pills as "in a base of Lactose (milk sugar)". They list some other items as the "formula", but with the normal homeopathic notation of 6X and 12X, indicating that the corresponding thing has been diluted 1,000,000 or 1,000,000,000,000 times. Commons sense will tell you that it's impossible to get sugar that's 99.9999% pure *anyway*. I'm willing to bet there's more remnants of insect parts in these pills than there are ingredients from the listed formula.

But you don't have to take my word, or my claims of common sense. Several recent in-depth studies have very strongly confirmed that all benefit from homeopathic "medicine" is the placebo effect.

If they work for you, that's great, but I hate to see people giving money to the scammers selling them. They're what, $4-6 a bottle? For 125 sugar pills? For that price, you can get a whole pound of organic sugar and make bunch of rock candy.

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You know what? I get sick of people who have probably never used Hyland's Teething Tablets knocking homeopathy.

How can something you give a 6 month old baby have a "placebo effect?" The child doesn't know what it's supposed to do when you give it to him, does he? So how can it be a placebo? For a placebo to work, you have to know WHY you are taking it.

I've seen homeopathics WORK for all three of my kids with my own eyes. Hyland's teething tablets, their calms forte and their bedwetting tablets WORK.

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Err, yes, that's right, I've never used them. See above.

There is a variation of the placebo effect called "the observer-expectancy effect" -- in other words, the placebo effect may be working on *you*. That's why scientific studies require a _double_ blind, where neither the subject _nor_ the experimenter know if the subject is a member of the control or experimental group.

When this method is applied to homeopathy, it just plain doesn't stand up.

And let me go back to the common sense angle. Look again at those dilution numbers. There very practically is nothing there but sugar and whatever contaminants that contains. In fact, in the specific case of these teething tablets, there's also the possibility that a little sugar is relief in and of itself.

Like I said, if it works for you, that's great, but I really hate to see the companies that sell this stuff taking so much money for it, and I hate to see people recommend that *other* parents give their money too.

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My pediatrician recommended the Hyland's teething tablets when Paul got his first two teeth at 4 months old. It's nice to have another option to try before giving your child tylenol.

And like momma2minbu pointed out, infants don't know what the pills are supposed to do. I don't use homeopathic solutions because they're ancient or more "natural", I use them because they were recommended by my pediatrician or other parents. I don't know if they work for all children, but I do know they work well for my son.

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