Guest Post - Teething by The Blissful Baby Expert

My guest post today is by The Blissful Baby Expert

Teething is one of the most widely discussed topics if you have a baby, as at some stage in your babies first 2 years it is going to cause some sort of issue. In total, by the age of 3 years old the majority of children will have all of their 20 milk teeth. Some babies cut teeth with relatively no signs or symptoms at all and the first a parent knows about it is to see the little white dot in their babies mouth.

Other babies seem to suffer with every single one. The molars are particularly painful for all babies in my experience, as they are so big-they take weeks of rumbling before they begin to cut. The canines are also not a very nice experience for everyone either.

 One of the most asked questions is:

 When does teething start?

A: In my experience teething symptoms can start anytime from around 8 weeks of age, although some babies have been known to be born with 1 or 2 teeth that have already come through.

Pain and crying are just one symptom of teething. There are various other signs that your baby is suffering from sore gums:

*More loose poos than normal

*A red, sore bottom

*Pulling at the ears (a sign of pain on one side of the mouth)

*Decreased appetite-refusing to drink her milk or eat solids (mouth may be too sore)

*Dribbling

*Wanting to chew everything

*One or both cheeks being very red and hot to touch

*Generally whingy or unhappy (if teeth are just having a rumble and causing a small amount of pain)

*Unexplained bouts of screaming hysterically which nothing you do seems to help relieve it (Due to very bad teething pain)

*Not sleeping well. Whinging or moaning in her sleep or waking up screaming

 If your baby is showing at least three of the above signs then you can say with a fair amount of certainty that it is likely to be teething pain that is the problem. Many parents will notice a few more unusual signs every time their baby is about to cut a tooth, i.e, they always develop a cold. However I have tried to stick to the more common signs that are normal for the majority of babies.

 NOTE: If your baby seems in pain but doesn't show any of the above symptoms as well, then I would recommend that you talk to your GP for more advice.

 Most adults will have experienced toothache or pain at some point in their lives, even if only when their wisdom teeth are having a 'rumble' for a few days and trying to push through the gums. It can even put us off eating because your whole mouth feels so sore- but at least we understand and can self medicate accordingly!

A baby has no idea and the only way to let their parent know is to cry. For the majority of babies, teeth can take a long time to appear. They rumble in the gums, gradually pushing their way up before "erupting" (aptly named by dentists) and 'cutting' through the gums so that you can finally see and feel the sharp tip

 Q: How can you help soothe the pain of teething?

Giving your baby things to chew on will help. You can keep teething rings in the fridge or even freezer and just get them out when needed and offer to your baby. Even giving her a cold, damp flannel to chew on will give relief as the cold numbs the pain and the fabric gives a soothing massage as she chews it.

If your baby is already on solids then offering cold foods like yoghurt or cool fruit purée will soothe sore gums

Sometimes rubbing her gums with a clean finger can also help

There are various gels,liquids,powders and teething products on the market, as well as necklaces all containing particular ingredients, all claiming to be the best to help with teething pain.

In my experience, after trying a number of different products with my own three children,babies I've worked with and chatting to other mums, I have found the most helpful and soothing product to be a teething liquid called ANBESOL

http://www.boots.com/en/Boots-Brands-A-to-Z/Anbesol/

It is also sold in gel form too, but I've found that like other gels, it slips off the gums and around the mouth as you are attempting to apply it. This means that you don't really get enough of it around the gums to relieve the pain

The liquid is much more effective because you can apply it directly along your baby's top and bottom gums using a clean fingertip. It contains an antiseptic ingredient as well as an anaesthetic so it brings instant relief.

If you use this and your baby still seems upset and in pain, then you can give infant paracetamol or ibruprofen once they are over 12 weeks old.

In my experience Ibruprofen based medicines are much more effective on teething or any other type of pain, than paracetamol based products

 A baby who is teething will not self soothe or calm herself down until the pain has stopped. During the day, sometimes teething is easier for your baby to cope with as there are lots of distractions in her environment.

At night, lying in a quiet dark room, all alone, she has nothing else to think about apart from the rumbling in her gums, so she will wake up crying repeatedly. She may settle initially with a cuddle if it is just mild teething pain, but will likely be unsettled and wake on and off all night. With more severe pain she will be almost hysterical and crying even when comforted.

This is the time to try the teething remedies you prefer. I find Anbesol liquid and ibruprofen based medicine are best at dealing with teething pain.

They will both take a good 20-30 minutes to take effect, during which time you should sit and cuddle her to keep her calm. Once you know she is no longer in any pain,  then you can encourage her to go back to sleep for a bit longer until the morning-but be prepared to be in for quite a few unsettled nights when new teeth are cutting-particularly the Molars and Canines, which cause very bad pain and can affect eating habits too.

 

Unfortunately teething is one of those things that goes on for months, sometimes without a tooth even cutting to begin with. Symptoms can begin from the age of 8-10 weeks and it is normal for a baby to suffer with teething pain or symptoms for 2-3 days and then be fine again for a few weeks. For most babies it does tend to come in spurts of a few days here and there.

All children are very different as to the age at which they get teeth-some begin getting them by 6 months, others are still toothless at 12 months-despite showing lots of teething symptoms. My middle son was actively teething every now and again from the age of 10 weeks but his first tooth didn't appear until he was 14 months!! I thought he would be gummy forever!

 

Q:Should you start cleaning the tooth once it's come through? How and with what?

A: You can start getting your baby used to teeth brushing as soon as their first tooth comes through. Buy a toothbrush and toothpaste recommended for your babies age and to begin with just let her chew on the brush and get used to having it in her mouth. If she's teething then she will enjoy the feel of it in her mouth. Getting her used to having her teeth brushed from a very young age will prevent any reluctance against doing it as she gets older.

 Q: Why do some babies get diarrhoea and sore bottoms when teething?

Many experts say there is no connection, but mums often say that they notice a connection.

A: As a mother of three children who have gone through the teething stages

and having spoken to many of the hundreds of parents I work with, I would say there is most definitely a connection between a baby having more loose stools when teething.

The reasoning behind the loose stools is due to the extra saliva that your baby produces and then swallows more of. This saliva aggravates the tummy and makes a baby produce more acidic poos.

The acidic poos in turn can cause a very red, sore rash on a baby's bottom

 I hope you have found this post helpful and I'm honoured that Lucinda asked me to guest post on her blog. If you would like other helpful baby related tips feel free to come and have a look at my blog www.theblissfulbabyexpert.com and follow me on twitter @blissfulbabyexp for FREE parenting advice anytime

Thank you very much for this informative post! Lots of questions answered for those of us worrying about teething!
Be sure to visit www.theblissfulbabyexpert.com for more great tips!

Guest Post, A rod for my own back? By Toby Goes Bananas

My guest post today is by the lovely Sarah who blogs over at Toby Goes Bananas

Now, before we start, I’m really not being ungrateful and I know just how lucky we are to have a baby who sleeps but I wanted to write this post to show that there are downsides to every up.

Toby has been a good sleeper since he was about 10 weeks old (which also coincided with us getting his reflux properly medicated and under control). When he was a newborn getting him to sleep was quite an effort and involved a lot of going out for walks in the pram, or sitting with him sleeping on either me or my husband because if we dared to put him down, or even move, then he would be wide awake and crying again. Anyway, from about six weeks old we started putting him upstairs in bed at about 6pm. Quite often he would wake up again several times during the evening but we would usually try and settle him in his cot rather than bring him back downstairs. We also didn’t use a mobile or any comforters in the hope that Toby would learn how to settle himself. He soon started sleeping longer at night and by about 12 weeks he was regularly sleeping from 6pm to 8am without waking up at all! After his four month immunisations (which he got at 18 weeks) he caught a cold and we had a bit of a regression where he went back to waking up a couple of times a night, and now I would say Toby sleeps through about 75% of the time and if he does wake up it’s only once for a quick feed and back to sleep.

So that was night time sleeping which we got sorted fairly early on. Naps were a different matter. I didn’t worry about daytime naps until Toby was sleeping through the night. He used to fight sleep during the day – he would clearly be tired but cry as soon as we tried to put him to bed. He would sleep in the car or in the pram but that wasn’t really convenient - sometimes you just want to stay in the house! So, we started trying to introduce a routine during the day too, doing the same things at the same time every day…and it started to work! From about five months Toby would have a morning nap for between an hour and a half and two hours, another nap from around 1pm to 3pm and then sometimes a short nap in the car when we went to pick his dad up from the train station at 5pm and then it was still bed time at 6pm.

At some point Toby started staying up a bit longer in the morning before going back to bed, he also stays up for a bit longer between his naps, so his afternoon nap is later and he dropped the very late cat nap altogether. So now, on a normal day Toby sleeps for up to two hours in the morning (occasionally longer) and the same in the afternoon. He naps in his cot upstairs. We have a blackout blind so I put the night light on, offer him a bottle, put him in his sleeping bag, say ‘na’night Toby, sleepy time now’ and leave the room. And that’s it. Almost without fail he will go to sleep on his own. Sometimes it takes ten minutes of him bumping around and chatting to himself, sometimes it’s within seconds.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this is fantastic and I love that we have a baby who sleeps but we have trained him so well that he will now only sleep in his cot (or occasionally in the car) and if he misses his naps he gets grumpy and whiney, he goes off his food and he often then wakes up in the night. So, with a baby who, at nine months, sleeps for 14 hours a night and then between three and five hours during the day, and is also in the process of weaning so spends another two to three hours eating, it doesn’t leave us an awful lot of time to do anything else! We do manage to do some activities during the week but they have to fit in with our routine. There are so many mother and baby groups, meetings with friends and weekend days out that we have to turn down because they don’t fit in with Toby’s naps. We are trying to do things at the weekends which mean missed or delayed naps to try and get Toby to be a bit more adaptable but sometimes it’s just easier to stick to the routine to have a quiet life.

So what do you think? Have we made a rod for our own backs by having such a strict routine or should we just be thankful that we have a baby who sleeps so well? Do you follow a routine with your baby or do you just go with the flow? I would love to hear your thoughts!

And lastly big thanks to Lucinda for letting me post this on her blog!

I've previously expressed my envy at how long Toby sleeps on Twitter! It does sound tricky that he's not sleeping elsewhere. I have a routine but sometimes I go with the flow. Luckily Eliot sleeps pretty much anywhere, although he fights it if we're out and about, which can lead to him being cranky.

Thank you Sarah for being a guest on my blog! If you haven't already be sure to pop over to Toby Goes Bananas for more fantastic posts.

Guest Post by Ickle Pickle

First up in my guest posts this week is Ickle Pickle...

I would like to share with you where I live, and what I see virtually every day. I live in a pretty little town in West Wales, which has a castle and a mill pond with lots of swans and other birds. I love going for walks here with mummy, and my sister, and we feed the birds. We usually go for a walk on a Saturday afternoon. The water is brown here because the photos were taken just after we had terrible storms and so much rain, then the water flows into the pond from the fields.

I also live near the sea, my Nana and Grandad live in Saundersfoot, which is a little village about twenty minutes from home. I go for lots of walks here with my family, and sit looking over the harbour watching the birds and the boats. Mummy meets Nana in the afternoons before we pick up the others. Nana looks after me on a Tuesday and she takes me for a walk too.

 

This is Tenby, where my brother and sister go to school. I go for walks here with my Granny Jane and mummy, it is so beautiful. Granny Jane isn't my real granny, she is mummy's good friend, who looks after me when mummy needs help. Tenby Harbour is probably the most photographed and well known in Wales. Thousands of people visit on holiday every year. How lucky am I to live in such a beautiful area?

Do these photos look like they have been taken in the summer? They were taken in February and March! 

 

A big thank you to Ickle Pickle for being a guest on my blog. What a beautiful part of the UK you live in! With those blue skies it certainly doesn't look like February & March!

If you haven't already be sure to pop over to www.icklepickleslife.co.uk  for more wonderful posts!