Sleep disturbance -Teething

Just as I recently wrote a blog about getting our baby to sleep in her own bed, we get sleepless nights, typical! I think it's mostly due to teething pains, so it's fair enough that our baby should feel the need for having us near her at night when pain is apparently worse.

Teething is one of those things that take some guess work from parents, at least for us. Months before her first tooth came, she was extremely congested. As she was only three months old, we took her to the doctors because we thought she had a cold. At first her doctor thought the same, but the symptoms never cleared and never worsened. So after several weeks her doctor simply declared that she just might be teething. We looked for signs like swollen and red gums, but they were rarely there (three nights in seven months).  The only thing that was constant throughout the teething process is sleep disturbance. 

I am not sure if it's the pain wakes the baby up, but I think it's more likely that it makes it harder to fall back asleep during sleep transitions. On top of that there's the congestion that goes with teething. If it's hard for us adults to sleep when we have a cold, imagine doing it when a pacifier in your mouth ... the only place were you can breathe.

So what did we do to help our baby? Sometimes we gave her infant tylenol (acetaminophen / paracetamol) but most of the time we didn't want to if we were not a 100% sure that it was teething pains. Sometimes, if she's already really awake we'd give her teething toys. Most of the time, we just endured it and tried to think good thoughts! Now our baby almost has a mouthful we know it probably won't be long until the good nights are coming again.