How do you know when a child is teething?

[snickers]

DD is 7 months old. How do you know when they are teething? She has always gone to sleep well at nights (not during the day but that's another story!) Down awake in cot after last feed and goes off to sleep like a dream. Suddenly this has changed, and she cries when I go to leave the room, and has started to wake at odd times suring the night (2am, or 5.30am, tonight, an hour after going to sleep) and is not easy to settle (a few seconds of cuddling used to be all she needed if she woke herself up and cried, and then straight back down to sleep - once we'd stopped feeding her in the night). BUT she has no other noticeable symptoms except drooling, and even that's not as excessive as some babies I know (she has been chewing fists and dribbling alot since 2 months when everyone said "ooh - she's teething!". No red cheeks, no other excessive grizzling, no temperature. But she has been sucking her gums quite alot recently, and has a dose of nappy rash over the last 2 weeks which she has never had before??

The key thing is that I don't know whether to rock her to sleep, which over the last few nights we have discovered can take 30-45 minutes before she's asleep enough to put her down without crying (and maybe we're instilling a bad habit?) but if I just settle her, and put her back down, she starts to cry again but calms down after 5-10 minutes and then back to sleep (We just hate it SO much to hear her cry, and panic that she's actually in pain or something and I'm being wicked by not rocking her back to sleep?)

I think I just need to hear that we will REALLY know if she's in pain (we did with her ear infection)... Do you ever get the hang of this I wonder before they begin to speak to tell you what's wrong?...

Sorry blethering on...

Well, snickers, dd1 didn't show any signs of teething whatsoever, no drooling, no grumpiness or anything whereas dd2 is very bad with teething, she gets a raging temperature, colds, sore bum and very very clingy, at the minute she is cutting 3 at the same time.

Every so often dd2 does the trick of crying when we leave her in her room, we ignore her and like your child after 5-10mins she stops and goes back to sleep then she won't do it again for a while, I think it is their way of testing we are still there or seeing how far they can go.

The nappy rash and sucking her gums could well be a sign that she is starting to teeth, dd2 licks her gums where she is teething so we know where to look ( I daren't put my fingers in now )

If i were you I'd get calpol and nurofen (which can be taken together, one combats pain and the other inflammation, and also get some anbesol (which is a little stronger than Bonjela) or teething gel.

Hope you little one doesn't suffer too much.

TBH, the only time you're 100% sure your child is teething is when you can see/feel the troublesome tooth! I always put grizzliness in my 2 down to teething (currently DS2 is waiting for his last 4 molars) but then the teeth don't appear & the grizzliness goes away.

Maybe try giving your DD a dose of Calpol and see if this settles her ie makes the pain or discomfort go away. If it has no effect... well I don't know! I'm doing this for DS2 at the moment and it seems to settle him

No, IMO you don't ever get the hang of it completely, even when they can talk.

Hope your DD settles soon. My 2 DSs first teeth appeared at 10 months with no real teething symptoms (despite me putting all previous grizzliness down to teething!!)

Not much help really I'm afraid.

My dd was the same at 7 months. No obvious sign so I wasn't sure if it was teething and was getting very fustrated with hearing her whinging at night. I even left her to cry for 20-30 minutes and I'm not really one for letting them cry so I felt awful when she ended up going to A&E with a rash and dehydrated, which they put down to teething. She did cut her first tooth shortly after. I wish someone at the time had said just give her more hugs. I try and think if it was me in pain I always want a hug so I suppose she will as well.
I tried squirting a bit of calpol down her but most of it ended up over her so I never really bothered with it. Tried homeopathic camillia but again ended up in a mess so I just resorted to giving her more bf. This seemed to be the best thing for her.