Teeth, food and sleep :(

[Padan1111]

Hi all

As you can see from the title, my thread is about the trilogy of stress for kiddies that is teething eating and sleeping!

My DD is 11 months old and is a happy little soul, but she has only 2 teeth so far and seems to really be having a hard time with the rest. She seems to be constantly experiencing teething pain, which is ok and managable during the day with distractions and teething gel, except she doesn't like to eat many solid foods. She could also be quite lazy of course and fussy since she will definitely eat the things she likes (including a biscotti type hard buscuits) but she definitely prefers mushy foods and purees to finger foods. We've moved her of more blended foods, but the amount she then eats is much less. She doesn't seem to mind this - not hungry between meals really, but it is a worry.

Then at night she sleeps so badly. She goes down quite happily, but will wake multiple times and wants to be picked up. As soon as she's in arms she will be asleep again. Then on putting down asleep she will seem fine until I'm tucked back into bed myself and then she will wake again! This goes on and on for maybe an hour (sometimes longer) until she settles again for a longer sleep. I don't think she's gone to bed without having nuerofen for weeks and weeks and sometimes (often) gets another dose during the night.

It's exhausting. I'm not 100% certain the food and sleep are linked to teething, but I think that if she could just get a couple more teeth through we could have a break. She can sleep through, she's done it multiple times although not recently.

I suppose there's no help for it, I just needed to share and hope that there's some others who experienced this and can reassure me that it gets better. This is my second DD, so I know there's light at the end of the tunnel, but it's hard to recall that at the moment!!

 

[IchigoMewMew]

When my DD's top teeth came through she got really fussy about textures of food, she mainly wanted toast, rice cakes and baby crisps so she could just sink her teeth in rather than eat. She's made up for it this past week she hasn't stopped eating! I try and avoid using calpol etc for teething it's not good to have for more than 2-3 days in a row I save it for fevers as DD gets diahrrea if she has too much. I put frozen fruit into one of the net feeders as well for her to chomp on, she also likes chewing coasters and wooden toys! Not really sure abou night time DD sleeps well if anything wakes her up it's usually trapped wind

 

[jessmke]

That's exactly how my DD was for the first year. She was nearly 1 before she got her first tooth, and I thought it was teething that was causing her to wake so frequently at night, but then giving her meds wouldn't help her sleep any better so I figured it must not entirely be just teething pain that was causing the disturbed sleep. I personally wouldn't be giving meds every day for weeks. If she is still waking frequently even when getting the meds then it probably isn't the teething pain that is bothering her. Also if she falls asleep immediately when you pick her up then she most likely isn't in too much pain. My DD would get bright red almost chapped cheeks when she was truly teething, so that would be the only time we would give meds, and even then we didn't usually give them first thing at night, only if she woke more frequently than normal. My DD always went down for the night super easily, would self settle from very early on, but woke 5-8 times a night until she started sleeping through a couple of days before her first birthday. I have no idea what caused the frequent wakings, it's just the way she was and she eventually outgrew it. If you LO is gaining weight appropriately then I wouldn't worry too much about her food intake and just let her regulate herself. My DD always preferred softer foods and even now at 2 years old she still doesn't like things like crackers or things that are crunchy or require a lot of chewing.

 

[Teri7489]

The sleeping, waking and settling with you sounds normal for regressions and not necessarily linked to teething. It may have started with that but unless she has other things such as red cheeks, dribbling looks, chewing and hands and so on its probably not that. I personally would stop giving nurofen every night, it's not recommended for extended use.

It's likely she's just not a fan of certain textures. I did blw with my daughter as she would just not touch any puree food. Still to this day she won't have weetabix, any cereal if it has gone too wet, mashed potatoes or anything really soft. I would just continue to offer different things after half her milk so she's not really hungry, then see what she eats then give the rest of her milk. Gradually she will eat more and it will be less of a worry x