MOTHERCRAFT HINTS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 140, 3 September 1927, Page 19

MOTHERCRAFT HINTS

“TEETHING” TROUBLES The young - mother usually finds that if her baby is teething, any worries she may have about his health are poohpoohed by experienced mothers. She will gather that the magic word “teething” is to be regarded as a full explanation of any and every disturbance in his progress, and that so long as she can nod wisely and say “teething,” she is apparently not to expect to find a remedy. It is obvious, however, that Nature never intended teething to be accompanied by disturbance of health, since a child is getting teeth during the entire period from about seven months till his third year. The mother will be told that her baby has “just a teething cold” or a ‘•teething rash,” but actually there is no medical connection whatsoever between a rash or a cold and the process of getting teeth. Why, then, have these phrases become a part of nursery tradition? Simply because a baby frequently gets broken sleep when a painful tooth is cutting, and in consequence he gets below par and has a lowered resistance against colds. He is more likely to take harm from draughts and more liable to infection from other people. Hence, unless the greatest care is taken, he will catch a cold while he is teething, but not because he is teething. It may, therefore, be said that teething is not, as most mothers think, a complete excuse for a baby having a cold, but a reason why added precautions should be taken to avoid it. In the case of a rash the young mother is supposed to be soothed into inactivity because other mothers of large families say “every one of my babies had a rash with every large tooth.” The truth is that with teething the child enters a new stage of development, and some ingredient in his diet now disagrees with him where before it suited him. Very frequently it is the small amount of malt in rusks which disagrees. One part of his diet after another should be left out for a week till the trouble is traced. A rash is produced by some digestive trouble, however slight, and should be ' cured. If people talk wisely about “overheated blood” the mother should take the baby’s temperature, and in 199 cases out of 100 teething babies 'it will be normal.