Approaching teething naturally

My gorgeous angel did not pop a single tooth out until she was nearly 12mths old. She then proceeded to pop out 6 in a relatively fuss free 2 months. Cue a deep sigh of relief from hubby and I, as we assumed we had a 'good' teether. Damn fools we were.

Little miss then started to cut her last two incisors, and all hell was let loose in our house. Screaming tantrums over everything, poor sleep, constant grumpiness and two overwhelmed parents who were not prepared for this. One day I was holding her while she writhed around in pain, and I realised if I was in this much pain I'd take some nurofen! I dug out the bottle, dosed her up and 20 minutes later we had peace again! Blessed relief. Three days later I realised I was constantly reaching for the nurofen and decided enough was enough. It was time to seek out effective natural remedies.

My first lesson was that to use the natural remedies effectively, you MUST get onto it early. Waiting until you have a screaming baby to administer a treatment is too late. It just won't work. However starting at the first sign of irritability gives you heaps of time to get on top of it.

I tried a few things, but this is what worked for us....

Hylands homeopathic teething gel
This stuff is gold! It needs to be applied every 15mins, but calms and soothes very quickly. You can get it from most chemists.

Infants friend
This worked beautifully in combination with the gel. Again it soothed bubs irritability. She loved this one and would come running as soon as I got the teaspoon out. Available from most chemists.

An amber necklace
I'll be honest, I'm still not sure what I think about these necklaces. I never noticed a huge difference, however my daughter knew which shelf it lived on and would often ask for it. She stills does. When she's had enough she comes over and asks for it off. Who am I to deny her own intuition about what works for her? I was recently privy to an interesting conversation about these necklaces, and the energetic effect they have on children. There were some opinions that they are too grounding, and almost dull the child to their own feelings. I did some reading about the properties of amber, and they are indeed very grounding. One author suggested that the parent should wear the amber first before giving it to the child. I did this, and I only put it on when she requests it. I feel that this would overcome any negativity, and if it makes her feel better than that is great.

Some type of cool teether
Most young babies are more than happy to chew on a teething toy or rusk. One issue we found was that a one year old had NO interest in chewing these things. She did like a frozen icy pole, still in its closed wrapper, and was happy with this solution until one day she bit through the wrapper and was eating the icy pole! Oops! No more icy poles for her. A friend recommended frozen strips of dried banana, which was very clever. Our little ange'ls most favourite though was frozen raspberries. She would eat 1/2 box at a time.

A combination of all the above works wonders for us. Since starting this and learning to recognise the early signs, we have not had to use any pain medications. Teething is still not the happiest time in our house, but it can be handled naturally and effectively.