Is DD teething already, or could it be something else? Allergy?

DD - who is 4 months in a couple of days - has been getting red cheeks and drooling a lot for the past few weeks on and off at various times. It's becoming more frequent, especially late in the day (last couple of hours before bedtime) Sometimes one cheek, sometimes both. She's also become very keen on gnawing on her hands more and more (also wondering if this is developmental only?) and gumming down on my finger wrapped in a cloth in the last two days. She seems to have these symptoms the worst directly after feeding (BF), especially her last feed before bedtime.

Today in particular she has fiercely bright red cheeks (even her forehead/eyebrows are going quite red and blotchy also) particularly directly after she feeds and she's quite grizzly and not sleeping as well. She usually just has her grizzly patch late in the day. Her cheeks look very dry and you can see the capillaries when you look closely.

I can't tell if this is teething or not. I can't tell what I should be looking for in her mouth, although I am looking at her bottom gums trying to see any lumps/white and just don't know what I should be seeing. There's nothing very obviously there, but I also don't know what a tooth under the surface of the gum should look like.

I had peanut butter yesterday for the first time since cutting it out in an elimination diet for BF and bad wind problems, and splurged and had a dessert which had dairy in the pastry at Easter (elimination diet had also cut out dairy), so I'm wondering if the symptoms she is having today might be food related, or whether it is teething and hence just an escalation in the symptoms she's been having for weeks, or even if it something else (illness)!

Any help would be much appreciated!

Miss C

Just last night I read a magazine that said: "The only thing babies get from teething is teeth"

Made me think, but made some sense to me also. So many illnesses goes together with being grizzly, hot, loose stools, classic teething "symptoms". So in answering your question ... I don't know :redface:

If she has a fever, I'll let a GP check her out, if not, hang on a few days and look were this is going. Is her gums swollen or red?? If you look in her mouth, you won't see white lumps (my rookie mistake I made *blush* ) Newly sprouted pearlies are actually see through, so it will look more like there are a flake of sandblasted glass imbedded in their gums. Or if you take a metal teaspoon and lightly tap against the gum, you'll hear it. DD's teeth did not make redlumps nor were her gums swollen, I only saw there were a tooth after she "bit" me and I felt it :lol:

Sam has everything but the red cheeks... I'm suspecting it's all developmental and just a normal phase babies go through. Apart from those red cheeks - they throw me. It is very early for teething, so I'd be suspecting other causes first.

As for people saying babies don't get sick while teething - I did. And I continued to get sick every time I had teeth coming through, right through to my twelve year old molars and wisdom teeth!

BW

DS got his first 2 teeth at exactly 3 months old.
Look for the gums to be bulging forwards not necessarily upward as you might expect given the tooth comes up. The first tooth looked like a tiny white dot, then it came through, but sometimes they can come up and then go down again which is frustrating for everyone!
DS got a high temp every time he got teeth, my GP told me that the pain is enough to increase their temp and not to listen to doctors that say teething doesnt cause a high temperature becuase indirectly it can.

Hi everyone,

Thanks for you advice and replies. It now seems DD is definitely teething and her symptoms have been escalating in the last couple weeks since I first posted.

Can definitely see her teeth through her gums - bottom middle two incisors have been coming up and down and when they're close to the surface they look translucent. But mostly it's her two bottom canines that are actually causing the problem! She cut the one on the left on Friday (bloody gum) but it's not continuing to come up - it's retreated gain (argh!) but both her canines are very close and you can see the tiny little white tip at times, and red sore looking gums with it.

I'm hoping it's not going to be a really long drawn out process, but we'll see, as they seem to be coming up and down quite a lot in the last week in particular, but her symptoms have been going on for weeks now and don't look like abating anytime soon.

Anyway, just thought I would say thanks for the replies - it's helped me to know what to watch out for, and also to be aware of other things it may have been, especially as she is developmentally going through things just as much as teething (as you say, BW).

Miss C

When Ash was teething he got red cheeks and drooled a lot, he also chewed on everything, including my boob :?
So it could be teething. I don't know about allergies though.

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Just last night I read a magazine that said: "The only thing babies get from teething is teeth"

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....gosh i hate that comment. Its so not true !!

My girlfriend has a 4mth old, and i didnt believe her when she said her little one was teething, but sure enough, when i saw her last week, there were two teeth !!!

Good luck with it all - i dunno if its better getting them 'over with' so young, or waiting till they a bit older.....my girls didnt show any signs till after 7 mths.

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Just last night I read a magazine that said: "The only thing babies get from teething is teeth"

---

....gosh i hate that comment. Its so not true !!

My girlfriend has a 4mth old, and i didnt believe her when she said her little one was teething, but sure enough, when i saw her last week, there were two teeth !!!

Good luck with it all - i dunno if its better getting them 'over with' so young, or waiting till they a bit older.....my girls didnt show any signs till after 7 mths.

Miss.. both my children got the two bottom teeth at 3 months.. one at 2.5 months.. so belive yourself!!

Everyone told me they were too young to teeth but i thought nope.. i think I am right this time. And yup there they were!

Can I ask anyone out there how long it took for your bub's teeth to cut after you started noticing teething symptoms? I just want to get an idea of the range of time it can sometimes take, as I think things are going to be a while before Emily has anything come through.

Some days are better than others with her symptoms - the last few days have been better, but before that she's been having a rough time of it, at times. It's probably been more than 6 weeks of teething symptoms now on and off, and other than one tooth breaking through a week and a half ago before it retreated straight away, there's no sign of anything else.

And yes, she's been gumming on my boob now too! :wall: Trying to avoid that by being careful and attentive to her latch ATM. Does help, but jeez, I hope that we can avoid it when she actually has teeth!

Ashton is the only I can remember clearly. He started the teething symptoms (drooling, chewing, unsettled etc) and between then and the first little bump showing up it was 2 months. He now has 2 very big teeth and the drooling, grizzling and chewing has started again... sigh...