Teething and Sleeping through

[Karen99]

I know I've seen previous threads on teething, but my searches haven't found what I'm after, so I hope I'm not duplicating stuff here.

Ds is 4.5 months and his first two teeth decided to make an appearance two weeks ago, only a week after he started to sleep through the night! Needless to say we haven't had a good nights sleep since and it only seems to be getting worse. Last night being the hardest, waking every 45-50mins and endless shhing and hair-dryer cd to get him to go back to sleep. He was up for an hour from 3:30am and not even a dose of calpol seemed to work (gosh I can vagely remember when night-time partying was the norm!)

We tried Calpol at night when the teeth were first breaking through the gums, and are now onto Teetha in the day and Bonjella teething gel just before bed and at 2am-ish. Want to avoid Calpol and not sure if his continuous waking is due to his teeth or if he's just developed bad sleeping habits.

Will we have to soothe every night until the full set come in or should we try to sleep train again? Is waking every hour whilst teething typical? Does it get better???? (I miss those full night sleeps I had for just one week! )

karen
i sypathise, my dd is the same but she is 13mths and her teeth have been so slow. and our nights sleep have been awful.
i use calpol - does seem to settle her into a longer sleep, the teetha works in the day as does the gel.
its v hard . he is too young for c/c which i do with my dd now but if she wakes repeatedly i know its not habit but teeth .

not much help, sorry!

Ds seems to prefer the Calgel teething gel - his face screwed up like a cat's bum when I gave him the minty bonjela It's also got chamomile in it which is supposed to calm them down a bit.

If he's being grumpy during the day too and dribbly with tangy stinky evil nappies the i would assume he's in pain at night and go to him when he sounds distressed.

If he seems his normal self during the day though I would be tempted to either try CC like Hermykne suggests, although I have heard some say that it's better to wait till they're a little older (not totally sure about that fact though) So dare I recommend Gina Ford's suggestions too? It has really worked for us. We are 100% sure now whether ds is capable of settling himself back to sleep if he's just been woken up by a noise or if he really does need some reassurance/cuddles/calpol because he's unwell. Basically if he's knackered and likely to fall back asleep by himself it'll take no more than 20 mins but TBH ds now doesn't grumble for any more than 2 or 3 minutes.

Hope he's better soon - the top teeth took ages to come down with ds

Thanks Hermykne and Bobsmum. DS seems to like the Bonjella, but may get in the calgel too to see if it 'lasts' longer. He sleeps well from 7/8pm to about 12am when the affects of the gel seem to have worn off. However, further applications in the night don't seem to make any difference.

I must admit we've followed the NCSS book, aswell as a twist on Ferber's CC with DS when he was about 3 months old (I know some people would be horrified to hear that, but I'm sure it depends on the baby and technique). We go in every 2-3mins and say the same reassuring words and he usually drops off in three visits (so less than 10mins of crying). As this isn't working anymore it seems like he's most likely in discomfort, but his cry varies and I think I'm getting to know if it's a tooth-pain cry or a I-can't-get-to-sleep-without-you-mummy cry. But who knows really!

Didn't know nappy content/smell changes with teething. They all pong, so not sure if I can use that as a sign or not!

Bobsmum, let me know if you got my email.

Forgot to say I'm sorry to hear about your bad nights too. I was quite surprised the teeth have come through so early,not giving us a breather with a few full nights sleep, but then again coming in late or over a long period of time is probably just as painful (for the parents!)