You have noticed recently some changes in your baby’s behavior, but have you considered that your five month old baby may be teething? Teething can start any time from three months to twelve months. The signs can begin two or three months before the first tooth appears. The symptoms vary among babies, as does the severity, but there are a few behaviors that are considered common for babies cutting teeth.
By now your teething 4 month old should have received their first tooth and you might be wondering if now is a good time to worry about his or her oral hygiene. The truth of the matter is that daily oral care can and should start before the first tooth even emerges. Early dental care is incredibly important because it not only maintains strong primary teeth, but can ensure long term tooth development as well. The plaque-causing bacteria responsible for tooth decay can manifest even in a child’s gums which can make early tooth emergence difficult and cause potential complications in your child’s oral development.
Some parents don’t realize that the teething process continues in a 3 year old. By this age, most of the deciduous or “milk” teeth have emerged from your child’s gums but sometimes it can take a little longer for the second molars to appear. Short of something possibly impeding the tooth growth, there isn’t anything uncommon about the teething process continuing as late as the toddler years. Some parents get concerned when their child experiences this discomfort because they are under the impression that they were past this stage in life. The second molars are usually the latecomers to the party but are not something to be overly concerned about.
You’re probably too young to remember the potentially excruciating experience of being a teething 2 month old, but maybe you’ve seen it happen somewhere before. All animals with teeth go through the process, not just humans. Maybe you’ve held a puppy that insists on playfully chewing and gnawing on everything in sight. Or, more appropriately, you’ve either had a child or seen someone else’s constantly with something in his or her mouth. For some children, tooth development is a painless and humdrum part of everyday life. However in some, it is both an irritating and uncomfortable stage of life where the suffering is shared by both the child and the parents. Hopefully this article will shed some light on this necessary stage in child growth as well as offer up some tips on how you can better remedy your child’s pain.
It isn’t all that common for the teething process to begin in a 1 year old, but it isn’t unheard of either. Just as no two children are exactly alike (even twins carry a minutia of distinction), no two children will develop in quite the same manner. There are always differing factors which make the child’s development a unique and personal experience and the same applies to the teething process. Some children start early in life and some start late, it’s really nothing to be afraid of and it’s usually nothing to lose sleep over. It might even surprise you to learn that in some extremely rare cases, tooth breakthrough was known to begin as late as four years of age in some children.
