Infant teething

“ FROM TEETHING.—The bowels of the infant at the breast, as well as after it is weaned, are generally affected by teething. And it is fortunate that this is the case, for it prevents more serious affections. Indeed, the diarrhoea that occurs during dentition, except it be violent, must not be subdued; if, however, this is the case, attention must be paid to it. It will generally be found to be accompanied by a swollen gum; the freely lancing of which will sometimes alone put a stop to the looseness: further medical aid may, however, be necessary. ”

“ That, if the parent is able to support her infant upon the breast alone, teething will be found comparatively an easy process, and unattended with danger; the mother thus reaping a delightful reward for all the anxieties and privations nursing necessarily involves. That the child brought up partially, or entirely, by hand will always pass through dentition with more or less of pain and difficulty; but that even here, if the diet has been properly regulated, much less suffering and inconvenience will arise than when less attention has been paid to it. ”

“ MANAGEMENT OF THE INFANT WHEN TEETHING IS WITHOUT DIFFICULTY. In the child of a healthy constitution, which has been properly, that is, naturally, fed, upon the milk of its mother alone, the symptoms attending teething will be of the mildest kind, and the management of the infant most simple and easy.
SYMPTOMS.—The symptoms of natural dentition (which this may be fairly called) are, an increased flow of saliva, with swelling and heat of the gums, and occasionally flushing of the cheeks. The child frequently thrusts its fingers, or any thing within its grasp, into its mouth. ”

“ FIFTHLY, OF CONVULSIONS.—If they should occur, and they are not unfrequently excited by difficult teething, and then give great alarm to the parent, relief will be afforded by immersing the hips, legs, and feet of the infant in water as warm as can be borne, and at the same time applying over the head and temples a piece of flannel wet with cold water. I have also often cut the fit short by sprinkling cold water in the child's face while in the bath. The gums should always be looked to, and if they appear swollen, and painful, at once lanced. ”

“ During this training process a child may cry, at first, a great deal; but, for a healthy child, this use of the lungs does no harm, and tends rather to strengthen than to injure them, unless it becomes exceedingly violent. A child who is trained to lie or sit and amuse itself, is happier than one who is carried and tended a great deal, and thus rendered restless and uneasy when not so indulged.
The most critical period in the life of an infant is that of dentition or teething, especially at the early stages. ”

“ Selfish and thoughtless nurses, and mothers too sometimes, give cordials and sleeping-draughts, the effects of which are too well known.
During the cutting of the temporary teeth, the infant's head should be kept cool, and its feet and hands warm. The body clothing should be light but warm. The apartments occupied by the child should be rather cool at this time. If the bowels are confined, the diet should be altered, and a little calcined magnesia given in milk. Weak and improper food is often the cause of tardy teething. Children should be washed daily, and always kept sweet and clean. ”

“ The child is at one time restless and irritable, and at another heavy and oppressed: the sleep will be broken, and the infant frequently awake suddenly and in alarm from its short slumbers. Such are the chief symptoms of difficult teething, and which will be present to a greater or less degree. ”

“ It does not often occur in perfectly healthy children; but an infant who is attacked by it is usually observed to have been drooping for some time previously, to have lost its appetite, to have become fretful by day and restless at night, and to present many of those ill-defined ailments which are popularly ascribed to teething. At length, after these symptoms have lasted for a few days or weeks, a slight crowing sound is occasionally heard with the child's respiration, shorter, more high-pitched, but less loud than the hoop of hooping cough. ”

“ Nothing is more uncertain than the order of teething. A child seldom cuts his second grinders until after he is two years old. He is, usually, from the time they first appear, two years in cutting the first set of teeth. As a rule, therefore, a child of two years old has sixteen, and one of two years and a half old, twenty teeth.
60. If an infant be feverish or irritable, or otherwise poorly, and if the gums be hot, swollen, and tender, are you an advocate for their being lanced? ”

“ If the child is kept in all-round good condition, teething is merely a part of its all-round development, no more troublesome than the growth of the hair on the head, or the nails on the fingers. To the healthy child, the cutting of each successive tooth may bring a trifling irritability, restlessness or wakefulness for a few nights, and drooling. The baby may even suffer from loss of appetite, a very slight fever, light vomiting, or streaks of undigested food in the stools; but these symptoms will last only a few days and the baby will recuperate rapidly. ”

“ The habit of thumb sucking is an ugly one. Another way to stop it is to bind a piece of cardboard on the arm and long enough to reach a little above or below the elbow. Then the arm cannot be bent.
Should the baby use an ivory or rubber ring to bite on when teething? A special cracker is now made in the form of a ring; it is quite hard and composed mostly of malt sugar and is intended for teething babies to bite on.
MOTHERS' REMEDIES.-1. Teething, What One Quebec Mother did for.—"Rub paregoric on the gums. This always eased my children." ”

“ The testimony of physicians who have specialized in the care and feeding of children, and of mothers who have raised normal babies, proves that both teething and weaning are normal and gradual operations which do not seriously disturb the child’s health, if the digestion is in good condition. ”

“ It is in general impossible to assign any distinct exciting cause for the affection, though the fact that in two-thirds of the cases it occurs between the ages of six months and three years, proves it to be in some way intimately associated with teething. The oldest child in whom I have ever seen it was aged between seven and eight years, and the youngest a little under six months. It is of excessive rarity for the arm alone to be affected, but it is by no means unusual for the legs alone to be paralysed ”

“ In the severe form a medical man should be consulted early, as more energetic remedies will be demanded; that is to say, the gums will require to be freely lanced, warm baths to be used, and medicines to be given, to ward off mischief from the head, from the chest, and from the stomach.
If you are living in the town and your baby suffers much from teething, take him into the country. It is wonderful what change of air to the country will often do, in relieving a child who is painfully cutting his teeth. The number of deaths in London from teething is frightful ”

“ The saddest period in a child's life is undoubtedly the period of teething. If you saw a baby for the first time and didn't understand that period, you would denounce the cruelty which inflamed its gums, upset its digestion, kept it awake, condemned it to incessant torture. ”

“ Children, about the time of cutting their teeth, slaver much, and have generally a looseness. When the teething is difficult, especially when the dogteeth 560begin to make their way through the gums, the child has startings in his sleep, tumours of the gums, watchings, gripes, green stools, the thrush, fever, difficult breathing, and convulsions.
Difficult teething requires nearly the same treatment as an inflammatory disease. If the body be bound, it must be opened either by emollient clysters or gentle purgatives; as manna, magnesia alba, rhubarb, senna, or the like. ”

“ In infancy there is no period which is more likely to affect the future disposition of the child than that of teething, producing as it does fretfulness, moroseness of mind, etc., which if not checked will manifest itself in after days. ”

“ He made the observation that in healthy infants, children of healthy parents and nursed by healthy women, the time of teething is gotten over without difficulty, while serious accidents occur frequently in weak and sickly children not brought up and nourished according to hygienic principles, or born, as not often happens, with special hereditary predispositions. ”

“ All cavities should be filled with a soft filling. The milk teeth should not decay, but should fall out, or be forced out by the second set. A child should be taught to gargle early and a mouth wash should be used morning and night.
Dentition.—As a general rule the process of teething is accompanied by some symptoms. There may be fever, restlessness, and loss of appetite; though in many cases there are absolutely no symptoms. Some children seem to teethe hard, others easily. The same child may have some teeth without pain, and with others it may suffer severely. ”

“ The time of teething is looked forward to by most mothers with undisguised apprehension, nurses attribute to it the most varied forms of constitutional disturbance, and doctors constantly hold forth to anxious parents the expectation that their child will have better health when it has cut all its teeth. ”

“ But as a rule if no teeth are cut by the time the baby is a year old, it is regarded as an evidence of faulty nutrition, perhaps bordering on rickets.
The baby who is properly fed and cared for cuts his teeth with little or no trouble, in spite of the widely current belief that a teething baby is a sick baby. We have no way of estimating the number of babies who die needlessly from infections and digestive disturbances because of this fallacious conviction. ”

“ A baby should be bathed regularly at about the same time each day. During the first days of a child's life, he should be sponged in a warm room, with water at blood heat. In removing the garments, the mother should roll the infant gently from side to side, rather than lift him bodily. It is well to have a flannel cloth or apron ready to cover the child when it is being undressed. The baby's face should be washed in clear water, firmly and thoroughly with a damp cloth, and dried by patting with the towel. Then soap should be added to the water and the other parts of the baby's body washed in it ”

“ It is met with less commonly now than formerly, when people were accustomed to keep infants unduly wrapped up, and to be less careful than most are now-a-days about washing and bathing. It depends on over-irritation of the sweat glands of the delicate skin of the infant, the result of which shows itself in the eruption on the body and face of a number of small dry pimples sometimes surrounded by a little redness, itching considerably, and when their top has been rubbed off by scratching having a little speck of dried blood at their summit. ”

“ The well-nourished body of a properly fed child does not furnish an abiding-place for disease-germs.
Through watching the conferences between mothers and physicians at Better Babies Contests, I have come to realize that, while 75 per cent. of the ailments from which babies suffer can be traced to some form of stomach or bowel trouble, comparatively few women recognize symptoms of malnutrition or overfeeding for the menace which they really are. Many mothers seem to consider that a slight digestive trouble is almost as casual a feature of baby’s career as teething. ”

“ Never give him patent remedies which are said to relieve the pain of teething, or to make him sleep, or to cure diarrhea, for such medicines are likely to do the baby much more harm than good, especially in summer when the digestion is so easily disturbed. It is so much easier to keep the baby well than it is to cure him when he is sick, that wise mothers try to take such care of the baby that he will not be sick. ”

“ If a baby were suckled at stated periods, he would only look for the bosom at those times, and be satisfied. A mother is frequently in the habit of giving the child the breast every time he cries, regardless of the cause. The cause too frequently is that he has been too often suckled—his stomach has been overloaded, the little fellow is consequently in pain, and he gives utterance to it by cries. How absurd is such a practice! We may as well endeavour to put out a fire by feeding it with fuel. An infant ought to be accustomed to regularity in everything, in times for sucking, for sleeping, &c. ”

“ Arbuthnot observes, that above a tenth part of infants die in teething, by symptoms proceeding from the irritation of the tender nervous parts of the jaws, occasioning inflammations, fevers, convulsions, gangrenes, &c. These symptoms are in a great measure owing to the great delicacy and exquisite sensibility of the nervous system at this time of life, which is too often increased by an effeminate education. Hence it comes to pass, that children who are delicately brought up, always suffer most in teething, and often fall by convulsive disorders. ”

“ The neglect of nature’s commands commonly entails disorders to health. It remains uncertain whether disease germs can be transmitted to the infant through its mother’s milk. It is still more questionable whether, in the act of suckling, vitally important maternal qualities can be transmitted from mother to child. There is some doubt whether the continuance of lactation is a fairly sure preventive of the occurrence of a fresh pregnancy. ”