Teething

[sofreakingtired]

Hi everyone. Just wondering (as I seem to be losing the plot here), what the hell do you do with a teething baby when they wake in the night? Occasionally she just won't go back to sleep. Cries if put back in cot (usually self settles no problem now at bed time and through night), won't be rocked back to sleep or cuddle up in bed with me. Just fights me off and I end up awake for 3/4 hours until she's tired again. Any advice or is this just the way it is? Sorry - I seem to be constantly questioning things, not coming naturally to me!

What do you give for teething? On nights where our LO is really bad they have settled with calpol- we usually try teething gel/powder first and if they are still really upset we give calpol.

Is baby actually cutting teeth?

For the 2 or 3 days of teeth actually cutting through, to find the full daily dose of Calpol (4 four hourly doses) given over the day gives the best build up of pain killers to last trough the night.

This is not something you should do for more than 4 days though.

If you're not sure of the reason for the wakes, I would try 2 days of full dose Calpol through the daytime. If it's pain, that will resolve the night time issues and you know for sure the problem is pain. If there is no difference in those 2 days then I would stop giving Calpol because it must be something else.

Depending on baby's age, you could also give infant ibuprofen. This can run in conjunction with paracetamol. We found it helpful when our DD cut 4 molars in 3 days.

Thanks all. I use ibuprofen for teething as it seems to work best for her. If she wakes crying I use bonjela etc, but I kind of meant after that, when she's stopped crying and pain relief has kicked in. She's wide awake but not upset any more, and won't sit on the rocking chair and cuddle, or be put back in cot, as in her head that's her awake. Ended up coming downstairs last night to try and "reset" her so I could take her back up half an hour later and do bed time again, at 3:30. I just wondered if other people give in and go downstairs, or fight them in their room which seems to make things worse?

Sorry - yes I think she will be cutting a tooth in the next day or so as we've had dribbling for a few days and she started with a very funny nose yesterday which usually means a tooth will cut in the next day or so with her.

If it was me, I'd wait on the pain killers until you first see the tooth cut through the gum. That is when you most need to use pain relief and if you over-use it before hand you'll end up having to limit use when it's most needed. I think the packaging said not to use for more than 4 consecutive days.

At the painful point where teeth are cutting, I gave both paracetamol and ibuprofen at maximum dose on the packet and timed it so both would be given just before she went to sleep to have maximum effect for first stretch of sleep (paracetamol works for 6 hours and ibuprofen for 8 hours). If she woke within 6 hours then just anbesol liquid, if more than 6 hours I would give more paracetamol.

My one has cut 4 teeth so far and had pain to this level when the top 2 cut through (both came at once), just the occasional dose of paracetamol was sufficient for her bottom ones