The Truth About Why I Finally Caved and Bought a Mitt Teether

It was three in the morning, the floorboards in our old Texas farmhouse were freezing, and I had just stepped directly onto a plastic giraffe that was completely slick with baby spit. My oldest son, Carter, was four months old at the time and currently sounding like a feral cat in his crib. I picked him up, and in the moonlight, I could see that his little knuckles were literally chapped raw and bleeding because he had been gnawing on his own fist with the jaw strength of a pitbull.

I was so tired my vision was blurry. My mom's voice kept echoing in my head from a phone call earlier that week, telling me I just needed to rub a little whiskey on his gums to settle him down, which is a hard pass from me, or to give him a frozen washcloth. Well, I had tried the washcloth. He held it for exactly three seconds before dropping it directly onto the dog hair covering my living room rug, and when I tried to give it back, he screamed like I had deeply insulted him.

I'm just gonna be real with you. Before I had kids, I was a teacher who thought I had this whole child development thing figured out. I used to see those little wearable silicone gloves on Instagram and roll my eyes so hard I almost pulled a muscle. I thought they looked like tiny boxing gloves and were just peak consumer nonsense designed to separate anxious moms from their money. I fully believed my baby was just going to politely chew on a rustic wooden ring like some kind of angelic pioneer child.

But standing there in the dark with a crying, drool-soaked baby who was actively eating his own hand, I completely folded. I sat in the rocking chair, pulled up my phone, and frantically searched for a mitt teether with the fastest shipping possible, entirely abandoning my pride just so we could all get some sleep.

The ridiculous gap between mouth pain and hand skills

My doctor tried to explain the biology of what was happening to Carter, and while it made sense, it also made me furious at how human babies are designed. Apparently, the teething process is this massive marathon that starts way earlier than you think. Our doctor said something about the teeth actually shifting and moving around under the gums for like eight days per tooth before you ever even see a white bump, which sounds like absolute torture if you stop and think about it.

The problem is that this deep gum ache usually starts kicking in right around three or four months. Do you know what a four-month-old is terrible at? Holding literally anything. Their hand-eye coordination is basically zero, and their grip strength is like that of a drunk crab.

So they've this overwhelming, desperate urge to bite down on something to relieve the pressure in their mouth, but they physically can't keep a toy in their hand long enough to get it to their face. They drop the toy, they get mad, they cry, and then they resort to the only thing permanently attached to their bodies: their own hands. And once they start aggressively sucking and chewing on their fingers, you end up with constant moisture that causes these horrible red saliva rashes all over their skin, which just gives them something else to be miserable about.

What a wearable silicone glove actually fixes

When the glove finally showed up in the mail, I felt like a massive hypocrite strapping it onto my kid's wrist, but it took exactly one afternoon for me to realize why people buy these things. The entire point is that you completely bypass the need for the baby to know how to hold a toy.

It just velcros gently around their wrist so it physically can't be dropped on the dirty floor, and the top part is covered in this textured silicone cap that they can just mash against their face however they want. It completely covers their knuckles, so the skin on their hands gets a break from the constant drool and has a chance to actually heal up.

I guess there are all sorts of strict federal rules about baby products needing to be made from food-grade silicone without any BPA or weird heavy metals, which gave me some peace of mind since he was basically eating the thing for hours at a time. The one we had even had this crinkly paper stuffed inside the fabric part, so every time he moved his hand it made a noise that distracted him from his mouth for five seconds.

Let's talk about the choke-hazard elephant in the room

While we're on the subject of teething remedies, I need to get something off my chest because I see it constantly in my local mom Facebook groups, and it drives me absolutely up the wall.

Those amber teething necklaces. You know the ones. Every crunchy mom at the feed store swears by them and tells you that your baby's body heat warms up the resin and releases some kind of magical succinic acid into their bloodstream that naturally kills the pain. I'm sorry, but bless their hearts, that sounds like completely made-up nonsense to me, and even if it wasn't, the physical risk is terrifying.

You're taking a string of tiny, hard beads and tying it around the neck of a baby who can't control their own head movements. My doctor practically put the fear of God into me about them, explaining how easily they can snag on a crib rail and strangle a child, or how a baby can snap the string and immediately inhale a bead. It's just not worth the risk when there are so many safer ways to put counter-pressure on their gums.

Oh, and on a related note, don't ever freeze their chew toys totally solid unless you want to accidentally give them frostbite on their gums, just stick them in the fridge for ten minutes and that's plenty cold enough.

What happens when they finally figure out how to use their thumbs

The wearable glove phase is intense but pretty short-lived, because right around six or seven months, their brain finally figures out how to make their thumbs and fingers work together. Once they can seriously grip things and hold them securely, the mitt becomes kind of a gross, soggy liability. Drool plus fabric plus velcro eventually turns into a science experiment, and even though you can run them through the washing machine in a garment bag, I was more than ready to graduate to solid silicone that I could just blast with hot water in the sink.

This is where I get incredibly picky, because trying to run a small Etsy business while keeping three kids under five alive means I've zero patience for high-maintenance baby gear. I'm always looking at the price tag, and I refuse to buy anything I can't throw in the dishwasher.

When my second kid, Sadie, started getting her bottom teeth, I wanted something easy for her to hold, and we landed on the Squirrel Teether Silicone Baby Gum Soother from Kianao. I love this thing. It's shaped like a little ring, so it's impossible for them to drop once they've a basic grip, and it has this cute little textured acorn detail on it that she would just gnaw on aggressively while we were in the car line at preschool. It's solid 100% food-grade silicone, completely non-toxic, and it costs less than twenty bucks, which fits my budget perfectly.

Now, I'll say that Kianao also makes this very pretty Handmade Wood & Silicone Teether Ring, and while it looks absolutely gorgeous and would be beautiful in a baby shower gift basket, I'm going to tell you to skip it if you're the one doing the everyday cleaning. It has this untreated beechwood ring, which means you've to carefully wipe it down with a damp cloth and you can't soak it in water or put it in the fridge because extreme temperatures mess up the wood. Listen, I don't have the mental bandwidth to carefully hand-wash aesthetic wooden baby toys when I've a toddler hanging off my leg screaming for a juice box. If you've the time for that, more power to you, but I need products that survive the top rack of my dishwasher.

If you want another solid, easy-to-clean option, their Panda Teether is great too. It's completely flat and wide, so they can get it all the way to the back of their mouth when those awful molars start moving around, and the little bamboo details on it give them some good texture to chew on.

The messy reality of mouth pain

If you're currently in the thick of this phase, I promise you it eventually ends, even though it feels like you're going to be wiping spit off your chin for the rest of your natural life.

A few scattered things I've picked up after doing this three times:

• The drool rash is relentless. Keep a tube of plain petroleum jelly or a really thick barrier cream and slather it all over their chin and neck folds before they go to sleep, because the moisture will literally eat their skin overnight.
• Your baby will chew on things you don't want them to chew on. My youngest ruined the strap of my good diaper bag because he liked the texture of the canvas better than his actual toys. Just redirect them to a cold silicone ring and try not to get too mad.
• The signs are confusing. Sometimes they pull on their ears so hard you think they've an ear infection, but our doctor told us that the pain from the gums just radiates up into their jaw and makes their ears throb. So you drag them to the clinic for an antibiotic and find out it's just a tooth.

If you're losing your mind trying to find something your kid won't immediately drop on the floor, go ahead and explore Kianao's teething toys collection to find something that works for whatever weird grip stage your baby is currently in. You just have to survive this phase however you can, and if that means strapping a brightly colored silicone mitt to your kid's arm so you can drink your coffee in peace for ten minutes, do it.

Questions I usually get from other tired moms

How do I know if they're seriously getting a tooth or just being cranky?

Honestly, sometimes it's a total guessing game, but you'll usually notice your previously sweet baby suddenly producing a gallon of spit an hour and acting like you personally offended them. They might stop sleeping well, refuse to eat as much, and aggressively rub their cheeks or pull their ears since the pain shoots right up their jawline.

Can I just put these silicone toys in the freezer to make them extra cold?

My doctor specifically warned me not to freeze anything solid, even though it's really tempting when they're screaming. Apparently, giving them something rock-hard and freezing cold can seriously bruise and damage the delicate tissue on their gums, so just stick whatever silicone ring you've into the refrigerator for about fifteen minutes instead.

When are they supposed to start using regular toys instead of the wearable ones?

Every kid is different, but for mine, it was usually right around six months when they stopped waving their arms around randomly and seriously started looking at objects and grabbing them with purpose. Once they can sit up a little and hold onto a ring, you can ditch the glove and hand them something they can chew on independently.

Are these silicone things seriously safe for them to swallow all that spit from?

If you're buying from a reputable brand that uses 100% food-grade silicone, yes, it's totally safe because that material doesn't leak BPA, phthalates, or any of that other toxic chemical junk into their mouth. It also doesn't harbor mold in weird little crevices the way some of those old-school hollow plastic rings used to do back when we were kids.

How do you honestly keep these things clean without losing your mind?

For the solid silicone pieces, I literally just toss them in the top rack of the dishwasher with our normal loads, or I let them soak in a bowl of really hot soapy water if I'm already doing dishes. For anything with fabric or velcro, put it inside one of those mesh laundry bags before you wash it, otherwise the velcro will completely destroy your favorite yoga pants in the wash.