Teething: a mum's story (by Dr Tijana Fisher)

Wednesday, October 10, 2012 : Catherine-Anne Walsh

Recently, a friend from mum’s group asked about a certain teething gel and if we (other mum’s) would recommend it.  Being a dentist, even though I haven’t seen a child younger than 15 in my dental chair for many years, I immediately felt the need to reply to her Facebook post. Without doing any research on it, I pulled all my misguided and gossip-based pieces of information from my baby-brain depleted memory. I gave the woman all the wrong information about it and basically scared her into thinking this thing was poison in a tube. I later consulted good old Dr Google and found I was totally off the mark with the type of poison I presented it to be, but maybe not too far from the truth saying it was not very healthy for her baby.

The “Bonjela incident” as I like to call it, made me kick myself for offering advice without doing my homework (as a mum you tend to do that a lot, actually, especially a second-time mum dishing out wisdom to those naïve first time-mums) and also inspired me to go down the rabbit hole of teething relief products and see what I can find out. Is teething even a real ‘condition’? Are these medicaments, supplements, chewables and pieces of jewelry, which are so cleverly marketed to mums, really any good? (Read the whole story HERE)