What Is Infant Teething?

Infant teething is the process in which a baby’s teeth starts to grow after it’s born. Infant teething is part of the life of a baby in which every baby has to go through. It’s important in the sense that if it’s not taken care of during the teething process, you will be going through countless of sleepless nights. Therefore, infant teething should be attended to carefully when its symptoms start to appear. But there is nothing to worry about during the process as long as you know what you are doing and a little extra knowledge about infant teething you got here would definitely help a lot.

Generally when an infant begins teething, there is no set pattern on when it will begin, how long it will take and how painful it will be.  For one baby cutting a tooth might happen overnight without pain, while another infant might have to go through a long, drawn out and painful experience.  You may sometimes visibly see a rise or lump in the gum for several weeks, while sometimes there may be no visible clue at all until the tooth actually appears.

The process of teething often follows hereditary patterns, so if the mother and father teethed early or late, your baby may follow the same pattern.  On average the first tooth comes in during the seventh month, although it can arrive as early as three months, as late as a year, or in rare cases even earlier or later.

Infant teething comes with some common symptoms that are easily detected in your infant when it stars its teething process. Some common visible signs are the eruption of the lower front teeth. When this symptom starts to appear, it will come with swollen red gums in your infant’s jaw. The event occurs somewhere between six to ten months of age but sometimes it may happen that the process could start sooner like three, four or five months after it’s born. The lower incisors (lower jaw teeth) are usually the first to appear and it is followed by the upper middle ones, and these are the most difficult stages to go over with as this set of teeth will erupt faster than the rest. After that, the rest of the teeth will erupt more slowly.

In addition, other infant teething symptoms that you should be looking out for are high fever. When the infant is having fever higher than 100 degrees you should contact your doctor right away and have the infant investigated. Sometimes teeth eruption can be coupled with a cold or a flu as the baby’s body is more sensitive during the period. A health care provider will probably recommend a combined treatment for both teeth eruption and the cold or other infection the infant might have.

Infant teething can sometimes be a difficult period for an infant since it can cause soreness and pain in the gum at which the teeth will erupt through. Therefore, there are some sorts of methods and solutions to alleviate a teething infant.  Some common methods are to give the infant a cool object to chew or bite against. Teething rings cooled in the fridge are most often the best solution as they release the pressure in the gums and at the same time reducing the swelling and the soreness. Some parents choose to give cold food to a teething infant. This could be risky as cold food might contain germs that could be danger to the infant though it’s highly useful at calming the teeth eruption symptoms.

Infant teething is a process usually completes around the age of three. At this age, your child should have all of his or her twenty baby teeth. In case there is fewer than 20 baby teeth, you should contact the doctor right away to find out the causes of the problem. Regular visits to the dentist are recommended.  A regular visit to the dentist can make the child gets used to being consulted and treated at a dentist without feeling any fear. Other than that, oral hygiene is important in ensuring your child has a beautiful set of teeth when he or she is growing up.

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 1st, 2008 at 1:24 pm and is filed under baby teething, infant teething. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.