Teething

My daughter has been constantly chewing on her fingers the last week or so which leaves me wondering...is she teething? I thought this would be a good opportunity to talk about some of the symptoms of teething and what you can do to help your child.

Symptoms:

• Irritability
• Drooling
• Coughing (due to excess saliva)
• Biting and gnawing
• Cheek rubbing and ear pulling (pain can travel to these areas)

Addition Possible Symptoms (these are thought to be correlated to teething, but have not been proven):

• Diarrhea
• Low-grade fever
• Not sleeping well
• Cold like symptoms (runny nose)

So what are some things that you can do for your child to ease the pain of teething?

• Offer your child cold/frozen teething rings
• Feed your child chilled foods such as applesauce or yogurt
• Use Baby Orajel or a similar pain relieving product
• Give your baby Tylenol (check with your doctor first to make sure this is ok)

Here are some additional resources:

http://www.babycenter.com/0_teething_11243.bc

http://children.webmd.com/tc/teething-topic-overview

http://www.emedicinehealth.com/teething/article_em.htm

Feel free to leave comments about what has worked well for your teething child.