The truth about newborn teething rings and endless drool

"Just rub a little bit of whisky on her gums, that’s what we did with you," my dad suggested, watching Mabel gnaw furiously on her own fist at a Sunday roast. "No, you need a Baltic amber necklace, but only if the crystals have been cleansed in salt water," countered a woman in my NCT group who makes her own deodorant and views modern medicine with deep suspicion. The bloke at the corner shop, weighing in while I was buying milk at 6am, confidently told me to just let her chew on a frozen carrot.

I was sleep-deprived, covered in unidentified sticky patches, and completely desperate for a solution. When you've two-month-old twins who have suddenly turned into irritable, chewing machines, you'll listen to anyone. I spent three consecutive nights frantically searching the internet for the ultimate newborn teething ring, convinced that my daughters were medical marvels who were about to sprout full sets of molars before they could even hold their own heads up.

Our health visitor, a spectacularly patient woman who looked like she hadn't had a proper weekend since 1998, just sighed heavily when I presented my theories. "Tom, they're eight weeks old," she said, tapping her clipboard. "They’ve just discovered they've hands."

That time I thought my eight-week-old was growing fangs

If you're currently in the trenches of early parenthood, you've probably noticed your infant transitioning from a sleepy potato into a frantic, drooling creature. I was dead certain this was the onset of teething. I mean, all the signs were there, if by 'signs' you mean the three vague things to watch for I skim-read on a forum at three in the morning.

Our GP gently explained to me that while the teeth do start shifting around beneath the gums quite early on, the actual event of a tooth breaking through the surface is incredibly rare in newborns. I'm fairly certain he said the first actual tooth usually makes an appearance anywhere between four and seven months, though honestly, my grasp of timelines during that first year is hazy at best.

The furious fist-chewing and the sudden gallons of saliva? That's apparently just their salivary glands switching on for the first time, combined with the mind-blowing developmental realization that their hands are attached to their bodies and fit perfectly into their mouths. So, the reality of newborn teething is that it's mostly a myth, a phantom menace that makes you buy things you don't need yet.

A flood of biblical proportions

We need to talk about the drool. Nobody prepares you for the sheer volume of liquid a very small human can produce when those gums start acting up. It defies the laws of physics. I'd dry Mabel's chin, turn around to pick up a muslin cloth, and by the time I turned back, she was soaked to her collarbones again.

It gets everywhere. It ruins the carpet, it makes the buggy smell faintly of stale milk and regret, and it causes this horrific, angry red rash all over their neck and chin. You try to keep them dry, but it's like trying to bail out a sinking canoe with a teaspoon. I spent half my day changing their tops until I just gave up and started rotating them through a stack of Kianao's Sleeveless Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuits, mostly because the organic fabric actually breathed and didn't leave my girls looking like they had been dragged through a patch of nettles.

The drool is constant, an unrelenting feature of your life for the next year, dictating how many layers you pack in the changing bag and ensuring you never, ever leave the house looking presentable.

Our doctor also mentioned that if they get a massive fever or explosive nappies, that's just a standard nursery bug and entirely unrelated to their teeth, which brilliantly ruined my easiest excuse for absolutely every ailment they had.

Things that will apparently ruin everything

Once you accept that actual teething is on the horizon, the panic sets in about how to soothe them without accidentally causing a disaster, because if you listen to the internet, literally everything is a hazard.

I threw out a lot of advice very quickly. You have to bin those old-school numbing gels our parents used because the NHS essentially says they can mess with a baby's oxygen levels in a rather terrifying way, and for the love of god you must put the teething ring in the fridge, not the freezer, unless you want to give your child frostbite and bruise their incredibly delicate gums. The amber necklaces went straight into the mental trash bin too, seeing as wrapping a string of tiny, easily-swallowed beads around the neck of an unpredictable infant seems like the kind of idea you'd only have if you fundamentally misunderstood how babies work.

Chewing on woodland creatures and other remedies

Finding a teething ring that isn't a garish piece of toxic plastic is surprisingly difficult. You want something they can actually hold, but also something that doesn't look like it belongs in a neon rave.

I eventually bought the Fox Rattle Tooth Ring, and I'll admit, this one actually worked, though largely because the untreated beechwood ring was hard enough to provide whatever intense counter-pressure my daughter's gums were screaming for. Mabel would clamp down on it with the intensity of a tiny bulldog. It’s got this little crochet fox head attached to it with a rattle inside, and she spent a good half hour a day just violently shaking it at the cat. It’s a solid, single piece of wood, which appealed to my paranoid brain because there were no weird liquid-filled plastic bits that could puncture and leak strange blue fluid into her mouth.

If you're currently drowning in a sea of saliva and looking for something safe for them to gnaw on, you might want to browse Kianao's collection of teething gear before your sofa cushions get completely ruined.

On the other hand, someone gifted us the Baby Panda Teether, and it's... fine. It does the job. It's made of food-grade silicone, so you can chuck it in the fridge to get it nice and cold, which my other twin, Edith, occasionally appreciated. But because it’s silicone, it has this incredibly annoying habit of attracting every single microscopic piece of lint and pet hair on our rug the second it falls out of the buggy. Edith chewed it for about three minutes at a time before deciding my left thumb was a vastly superior option anyway.

The damp cloth revelation

When you're looking for a teething ring and the delivery is still two days away, you've to improvise. The single greatest piece of advice I ever received didn't come from a parenting book (page 47 of mine suggested I 'breathe through the frustration,' which I found deeply unhelpful at 3am). It came from an exhausted nurse at the clinic.

You just take a clean baby washcloth, soak it in water, wring it out completely so it's only damp, and shove it in the fridge or freezer for a little bit until it's stiff and cold. The texture of the terrycloth is apparently absolute heaven on sore gums, and because it's just a cloth, they can easily grip it in their clumsy little fists. The only downside is that you end up doing roughly four hundred extra loads of laundry a week, but when it buys you twenty minutes of silence, you’ll gladly pay the water bill.

I also spent a ridiculous amount of time just letting them chew on my knuckles. If you wash your hands thoroughly, massaging their gums with your bare finger provides immediate relief, though I must warn you that the day they seriously sprout a tooth, they'll bite down with the force of a hydraulic press, and you'll yell a word you shouldn't say in front of children.

As for keeping the actual toys clean, don't overthink it or boil the wooden ones unless you want to destroy them; you just need to wash the thing in the sink with some warm soapy water and let it air dry before they inevitably drop it behind the radiator again.

Before we get to the questions I usually get asked by panicked mates down the pub, have a look at Kianao's baby care collection to find something that might seriously help you survive this particular phase of parenthood.

Questions I frequently get asked by terrified new parents

Are newborn teething rings really a thing?

Not really, no. You can buy them, and parents certainly search for them, but your newborn isn't getting teeth at four weeks old. They're just discovering their hands and ramping up their saliva production. You won't really need a proper teething ring until they hit the three or four-month mark, though it doesn't hurt to have one in a drawer ready for the day they wake up furious at their own mouth.

Why is my two-month-old drooling so much if it's not teeth?

Because their salivary glands have just kicked into high gear and they haven't yet mastered the highly complex art of swallowing it all. It just falls out of their face. It’s entirely normal, incredibly messy, and mostly requires you to invest heavily in bibs and organic cotton outfits that can withstand being washed twice a day.

Is it okay to put teethers in the freezer?

I used to think this was a great idea until the health visitor corrected me. Put them in the fridge. If you freeze a solid teething ring, it becomes literal ice, which can bruise their already painful gums or give them mild frostbite on their lips. A chilled wooden or silicone ring from the fridge is cold enough to bring down the swelling without causing an injury.

How do I clean a wooden teether?

Keep it simple and avoid boiling it or throwing it in the dishwasher, because extreme heat and soaking will just warp and ruin the wood. I just wipe our wooden fox ring down with a damp cloth and a tiny bit of mild soap, rinse it quickly, and leave it on the draining board to dry.

Does Calpol cure teething?

Nothing 'cures' teething except time and the eventual emergence of the tooth, but infant paracetamol is sometimes the only thing standing between you and a complete mental breakdown at 2am. Obviously, check with your GP about dosages, but when the fridge-cold teethers and the wet washcloths failed, a bit of medicine was the only way any of us got to sleep.