Teething can start as early as 3 months, but teeth start to occur from 4-7 months.
The baby may be drooling, and can sometimes want to chew or gnaw.
For some babies it can be quite painful, and they can range from irritable, grizzly to crying and screaming from the pain. Their gums may be a bit swollen and tender.
Although conventional medicine does not recognise any broader symptoms when a baby is teething, anecdotally parents often report symptoms of a slightly high temperature, pain in ear (baby can tug at their ear, indicating irritation in this area), and a change in their bowel movements. Looser stools, and stools of a yellow, or greenish colour are often reported.
There are some lovely homeopathic medicines which help to ease the pain and distress, and calm down other symptoms which may be occurring too, like irritability, clinginess, and bowel changes.
If the symptoms of teething are not too distressing, and the aggravations are very short lived I recommend no intervention at all, except perhaps appropriate gnawing or sucking objects be made available to the baby. However if the distress of baby becomes too hard to handle, which it often can, then CHAMOMILA 30C is a well-known and very well used homeopathic medicine that can help with these symptoms. It covers so many cases of teething, that if a parent rings me and reports that their child is experiencing common symptoms of teething, I don’t bother to make an appointment. I’ll just get them to come down to the clinic and pick up a bottle of Chamomila 30C. This calms down so many cases. It is only if this doesn’t work, or the symptoms are a bit unusual, will I suggest a consultation to find a different, more appropriate medicine.