OUR BABIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 November 1938, Page 8

OUR BABIES

Published under the auspices of the Royal New Zealand Society for the Health of Women and Children (Plunket Society). “It is wiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom.” TEETHING. The Plunket nurses are constantly finding that this is a subject about which parents are apt to make grave mistakes. All sorts of upsets, including acute oi’ even fatal illnesses, are put down to teething if they happen to occur any time after the baby has turned six months of age. This is a most erroneous and dangerous belief, and has led to many tragedies. We would warn mothers very seriously against attributing any sort of illness to teething, and allowing the trouble to go on unchecked on that account.

“IT’S JUST HIS TEETH.” One has heard this remark too often regarding a child who, for instance, has been going downhill with continued diarrhoea or bronchitis or ear trouble. Babies may, and do, die of pneumonia or other diseases just because medical advice is not obtained in time, the parents buoying themselves up with a false sense of security, believing the trouble to be due only to teething. We have met mothers who are reluctant to allow any treatment for diarrhoea, fearing that if the diarrhoea was cured the teething trouble would break out in some other form.

One of the greatest modern authorities on children’s diseases says in discussing the subject of teething: “Teething used to be regarded as a frequent cause of serious and fatal disease. This is a dangerous belief, because there is usually associated with it the idea that, as teething is a natural process, the diseases accompanying it are to be tolerated and not checked, as they would be under other circumstances. Conseciuently we have often met with/ children exhausted with diarrhoea, which has been allowed to go on untreated for weeks, because it was held to be ‘only the teeth.’ The diagnosis of teething as a cause of any illness will always be a popular one, because it casts no blame on the parents, as exposure to cold, improper feeding, and rickets are apt to do.” It would be difficult to put the matter more soundly or more briefly than in this quotation. We would not suggest that teething will never upset a baby, but the occasions when teething is really to blame for serious illness are exceedingly rare.

A NATURAL PROCESS. Teething is a natural process, and in a normal healthy child it usually produces little or no general effect. Certainly fully half the number of healthy babies show no symptoms of any kind. At the same time, even in normal healthy babies, teething is sometimes accompanied by more or less distress, both locally (in the glims) and generally it may occasionally produce a tendency or liability to digestive upsets or to disease not present at other times. THE SIGNS OF TEETHING. The symptoms of slight nervous irritation, which are commonly seen even in normal babies, are usually as follows:—Some disturbance of sleep, restlessness at night and fretfulness by day, some loss of appetite, increase in quantity of saliva, some tenderness of the gums, and a constant tendency for the child to put the fingers in the mouth. The weight often remains stationary for a week or two. Overfeeding or forcing food against the inclination of the child may excite a mild attack of indigestion and diarrhoea.

Symptoms actually due to teething, and more severe than these, are rare in healthy children; but occasionally the gums are very sore or the temperature may rise above normal for a few days, with a complete loss of appetite. A cold in the head or a cough is more easily contracted than usual, and may be very persistent. Babies with a tendency to eczema often become worse, or have a definite outbreak of the rash when each tooth or group of teeth is coming through. Occasionally there may be convulsions before the tooth comes through, but one must always remember that teething, though it may predispose the child to illness, is not the cause of the illness. If the baby is obviously ill at teething time get medical advice and proper treatment at once. The. cause must be found and treated just as promptly as at any other time. Delay may be dangerous.