How to help baby teeth come through faster

I get asked this question a lot by my friends, my little one is 18 months old now and has all her baby teeth come through (apart from the second molars that take up to two years to erupt), they were all present from around 16-17 months. Her cousin is two weeks younger and has only 6 teeth! Now my daughter started teething early from around 3 months, she was cranky and always biting her hands and toys, even her health visitor thought she may get teeth early.

Her first tooth didn't actually poke though until she was 6-7 months old and yes she let the whole world know, she was a right dribbler, she also had a high temperature and the runs, so it was pretty obvious she was teething. Now when she was around 6 months old and I could feel little and see the little stumps trying to cut through the gums, so I used to rub a little teething gel onto the gums and it soothed her. Then all of a sudden she stopped being so cranky and she wouldn't dribble or chew everything, then a week or so later it started up again.

I couldn't understand why it was taking so long, then I found out the reason. teething gel does provide relief but it also hardens the gum so the teeth take longer to cut through the gums. So by giving her teething gel I was making the teeth work harder to cut through. I stopped applying teething gel and sought other natural ways to ease her discomfort.

How to help teething pain
I started giving her a raw peeled carrot to munch on, she loved it! Also I refrigerate them so they are nice and cold, sometimes she would eat the little pieces of carrot but other times she would just spit them out. I also started putting her teething keys in the freezer for half and hour or so, I didn't let them turn to ice, this also helped. I also gave her many different fruits and vegetable some hard and some mashed to help her use her jaws.

Now I found that giving her all these little things to munch and mash up with her swollen gums actually helped with her teething, I started giving her meat from around 5-6 months as well and she would just mash it up in her mouth. I think this is why she refused to eat baby food, she hated mashed up food and would prefer them whole so she could do all the hard work. I have never really needed to make baby food for her, she has always eaten what I have eaten.

Now on the other hand my sister in law didn't give anything to my niece to chew on, she would just give her baby paracetamol or teething gel. She never gave a her a carrot to chew on or put her teething toys in the freezer. So for me personally the teething stage was quite easy, she was ill for nearly two weeks with a high temperature, diarrhoea and sleeping problems but when she was better she had all her teeth come in at the same time.

I'm not saying this is what you have to do but this is what worked for me, also I don't like taking pain medication unless absolutely necessary and the same goes for my daughter I try other natural ways first before I resort to medicines. Its better that she knows pain and understands how to manage it rather than dull her senses all the time, but that's just my personal opinion.

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