The Truth About That Amber Baby's Necklace

I was standing over Beau’s crib holding a pair of tiny nail clippers, trying to decide if I had the nerve to trim his razor-sharp little claws while he slept, when my stomach completely dropped to the floor. He was eight months old at the time and deep in the miserable trenches of teething, so my mom had gifted us one of those trendy little amber necklaces to "draw out the fever." He had rolled all the way to the edge of the mattress, and somehow, the sturdy string of that baby's amber necklace had hooked itself solidly around the wooden knob of the crib spindle. He shifted his weight in his sleep, the necklace pulled taut against his throat, and before I could even drop the clippers to grab him, I heard a sickening little pop as the clasp gave way.

I'm just gonna be real with you, I aged about ten years in three seconds. I scooped him up so fast I woke him out of a dead sleep, crying and clutching this broken string of tiny, choking-hazard beads that were suddenly scattering all over his organic mattress. That was the exact moment my oldest child cemented his role as my permanent cautionary tale, and it was the absolute last time I ever put a piece of jewelry on one of my kids.

Why we fall for the crunchy magic

If you've never had a baby who's actively cutting four teeth at once, you might judge parents who buy into the weird holistic internet remedies, but desperation does funny things to your brain. When Beau was little, I was running a small Etsy shop out of my garage in the dead of the Texas summer, completely sleep-deprived, and scrubbing drool out of every fabric surface in my house. You get onto social media at two in the morning and see these perfectly curated moms with their peaceful, sleeping infants who are all wearing these earthy, cute little amber beads around their chunky necks.

They reel you in with all this talk about succinic acid, which is supposedly this magic anti-irritated substance trapped inside the fossilized tree resin. The whole pitch is that your baby's body heat warms up the beads, and then the acid melts out and absorbs directly into their bloodstream to take away the pain. I mean, I barely passed high school chemistry, but the idea of a necklace actively leaking acid into my kid's skin sounds a little bit like a sci-fi horror movie when you actually say it out loud.

But I spent twenty-five dollars on it anyway because the alternative was another night of him screaming until the sun came up. Bless my heart, I really thought I was doing something natural and good for him, entirely ignoring the fact that I had just tied a literal string of hard rocks around an infant's airway.

What my pediatrician actually said about the beads

After the crib incident, we had a well-check with Dr. Miller, who has the bedside manner of a very tired grandfather who has seen it all. I confessed the whole necklace thing to him, completely ready to be mom-shamed, and he just sighed and pulled his stool closer. He didn't quote a bunch of abstract medical journals at me, he just looked me in the eye and said those aesthetic little necklaces are basically tiny garrotes waiting to happen.

He told me there's absolutely zero proof that the whole acid-melting thing even works, but there's endless proof in his emergency room that babies will pull on things, get caught on furniture, and choke on anything smaller than a golf ball. Apparently, a lot of that cheap jewelry you buy off the internet is also full of random heavy metals like lead and cadmium, which I guess can seriously mess with their brain development if they sit there sucking on it all day. And don't even get me started on those holistic magnetic healing beads people are pushing on Facebook now, because unless you want to spend your entire weekend in the surgical ward dealing with perforated intestines, just keep those completely out of your house.

I felt like the world's worst mother sitting in that paper-lined exam chair, but Dr. Miller just patted my knee and told me that the only safe baby's necklace is the one that belongs in the garbage can. It was a harsh truth, but considering it cost me exactly zero dollars to take the thing off, my budget was pretty happy with the medical advice.

If you want to see some things that won't give your pediatrician a heart attack and will actually soothe those sore gums, you can explore Kianao's teething toys collection for safe, organic options.

How to handle pushy grandmas and family heirlooms

Of course, the hardest part about ditching the baby jewelry wasn't giving up the aesthetic, it was dealing with my own mother. My grandma had given us a beautiful, tiny gold cross that I apparently wore for my baptism, and my mom was absolutely adamant that my kids needed to wear it too. "You wore it and you survived just fine," she kept saying, which is the exact same logic she uses when she tells me I rode around in the back of a pickup truck without a seatbelt in 1993.

We had to find a middle ground because I wasn't about to put a metal chain around my wiggling baby's neck. So, instead of fighting a generational war over a piece of jewelry or risking a strangulation hazard, we did what my doctor suggested. If you absolutely have to appease your family by putting an heirloom on your kid for a special occasion, wrap it tightly around their fat little ankle and bury it deep under a tight-fitting sock while you sit there and stare at them the entire time they've it on. Never in the car seat, never during a nap, and never when you're folding laundry and looking the other way.

What we genuinely let them chew on now

By the time my second and third babies came around, I was entirely done with the crunchy internet remedies and just wanted things that worked, didn't cost a fortune, and wouldn't actively try to take out my kids. Teething is a messy, miserable business, and you really just need tools that can handle a lot of spit and rage.

The absolute holy grail in our house is the Panda Teether Silicone Baby Bamboo Chew Toy. I've a whole story about this thing because my youngest daughter basically lived with it stuffed in her cheek like a chipmunk for three solid months. It's made of this really thick, food-grade silicone that has all these different bumpy textures on the panda’s ears and paws. The best part is that I can just toss it into the top rack of the dishwasher when it inevitably gets dropped in the dirt at the HEB parking lot. I seriously keep three of them in a rotation, throwing one in the fridge right next to the leftover casserole, because when that silicone gets cold it genuinely numbs their gums better than any fossilized tree resin ever could.

Now, my mother-in-law, still trying to buy cute things, got us the Bear Teething Rattle Wooden Ring Sensory Toy. I'll be honest with you, it's absolutely adorable and the untreated beechwood ring is genuinely great for them to gnaw on since it gives that hard counter-pressure they crave. But the top of it's a soft crochet bear, and while the baby loves the texture of the yarn, it gets completely soaked in baby spit-up and drool within five minutes. I absolutely hate hand-washing it and waiting for it to air dry, so it's just an okay product for me. It mostly stays in the diaper bag for emergencies when I need a distraction.

Sometimes the best teething relief isn't even something they chew on, it's just getting their mind off the pain so you can fold a single pair of pants. We set up the Wooden Baby Gym in the middle of the living room rug, and the hanging animal toys are perfectly spaced so they've to reach and bat at them. It buys me about fifteen minutes of peace where nobody is screaming and nobody is trying to swallow their own fist.

And because teething makes them drool like a leaky faucet, which leads to that horrible red rash on their chest and neck, we basically live in the Sleeveless Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit during the summer. Synthetic fabrics just trap all that hot drool against their skin, but the organic cotton breathes and honestly washes clean without holding onto the weird sour milk smell.

We survived the teething years without any more emergency crib situations, and honestly, the peace of mind is worth way more than a cute Instagram photo. Before you head out to fight the good fight against teething and pushy relatives, take a second to check out the rest of Kianao’s sustainable baby essentials to find things that seriously make your life easier.

Questions I get asked about ditching the necklace

Can they just wear the necklace during the day if I'm watching them?

Honestly, I thought I was watching Beau like a hawk when he almost hung himself on the crib rail, so my doctor gave me a hard no on this one. It takes two seconds for them to snag a necklace on a drawer pull or a toy, and the clasp doesn't always break the way it's supposed to. It's just not worth the anxiety of hovering over them every single second.

What about a family heirloom baptism cross?

My grandma threw a fit about this, bless her heart. If you've to do it for the church pictures, put it on for the five minutes the photographer is clicking the camera, and then immediately take it off. If they absolutely must wear it to the family lunch, wrap it tightly around their ankle under a sturdy sock. Just don't let it anywhere near their actual neck.

Does the amber stuff honestly relieve pain at all?

According to my pediatrician and my own experience of watching my kid scream while wearing one, no. The science says their body heat doesn't get nearly hot enough to melt out the supposedly magical acid. You're basically just making them wear pretty rocks while their mouth hurts.

How do you clean silicone teethers when they hit the dirt?

This is exactly why I love the silicone ones over the fancy porous materials. If we're at the grocery store and it hits the floor, I just wipe it down with a baby wipe to survive the trip. The second we get home, I literally just throw it in the silverware basket of the dishwasher on the sanitize cycle. You can't do that with a necklace.

What if my mother-in-law gets mad I took the jewelry off?

I just blame the doctor. It's the easiest way out of family guilt trips. I just look real sad and say, "I know, I loved it too, but Dr. Miller said it's a huge choking hazard and he forbade us from using it." Let them be mad at the pediatrician instead of you, you've enough on your plate right now.