Dear Past Marcus: You Will Wear Silicone Teething Jewelry

It’s 2:14 PM on a Tuesday, and you’re standing in the kitchen watching Maya try to tape her favorite delicate gold chain back together while our five-month-old daughter looks on with zero remorse. You’re currently thinking, Wow, babies have an incredibly strong grip for someone who can’t even hold their own head up always.

Dear Marcus from six months ago: I’m writing to you from the future. The baby is now eleven months old, she has six razor-sharp teeth, and her grip strength has only escalated into what I can only describe as hydraulic pressure. You’re about to enter the teething phase, which is essentially a four-month-long system error where the baby’s primary objective is to destroy everything in her path using only her gums.

I know you’re currently laughing at the parents at the local Portland coffee shops wearing those chunky, brightly colored bead necklaces that look like they were designed by a preschooler on a sugar rush. You think you’ll never wear one. You think your plain black t-shirts and sensible fleece vests are safe. I hate to break it to you, man, but within three weeks, you’re going to be aggressively researching silicone teething jewelry on your phone at 3:00 AM while a tiny human tries to gnaw through your collarbone.

Your aesthetic is about to get a major downgrade

Here’s the thing about a baby hitting the five-month firmware update: they suddenly realize their hands can grab objects and aggressively pull them into their mouths. It’s their primary method of running diagnostics on the physical world. Maya’s gold necklace was casualty number one, but soon, the baby is going to start going after your hoodie strings, your watch band, and the skin on your shoulder. I logged fourteen distinct instances of her trying to bite my collarbone last Thursday alone.

This is where wearable silicone teething gear comes in. It’s basically decoy hardware. You wear it around your neck, so when you’re carrying her through the grocery store or trying to sit through a Zoom meeting with the camera off, her little hands have something safe to grapple with. It keeps her distracted, it saves your skin, and apparently, the counter-pressure on her gums provides some kind of temporary relief from whatever biological horror is happening inside her mouth.

But before you just go buying random rubber strings off the internet, we need to talk about the absolute most important safety protocol regarding this stuff. Because if you mess this up, the consequences are a lot worse than a broken gold chain.

The massive security patch for wearable hardware

When we took the baby to her six-month checkup, Dr. Thomas noticed the chunky silicone necklace Maya was wearing. She immediately leaned in and gave us a warning that completely rewired how I looked at these things. The golden rule—the absolute non-negotiable law of silicone teething jewelry—is that the adult wears it, and the baby never, ever, under any circumstances, wears it.

I don’t know who originally decided that putting a string of beads around an infant's neck was a logical parenting move, but it's a massive strangulation hazard. Dr. Thomas told us some genuinely terrifying stories about babies who were left in cribs wearing teething necklaces that snagged on the slats. It’s the kind of data that makes my heart rate spike just typing it out. You’ve got to keep the necklace firmly attached to your own adult neck with the breakaway clasp securely fastened behind you, letting the baby pull and chew only while safely contained in your arms, instead of ever taking it off to let her wear it like an accessory.

And while we’re on the subject of dangerous things parents put around their kids' necks, I need to rant for a second about amber teething necklaces. I see them everywhere in our neighborhood, and it drives me absolutely insane. People are out here buying fossilized tree resin on a choking-hazard string, strapping it to a baby, and claiming that the body heat releases some magic anti-irritated acid into the bloodstream.

I spent three hours digging through medical journals last month trying to find the mechanism of action for this, and there isn't one. The amount of heat required to release succinic acid from amber is somewhere around 400 degrees Fahrenheit. If your baby's neck is 400 degrees, you've much bigger problems than a newly erupting incisor. It’s pure pseudoscience wrapped in an extreme choking hazard, and the fact that they’re still sold next to actual, functional silicone teething gear makes me want to scream into a pillow.

Also, trying to freeze a wet washcloth to soothe their gums is a rookie mistake that just creates a sad, melting ice shiv that ruins their onesie.

My current loadout of chewable accessories

Since you’re about to dive into this world, let me save you some troubleshooting time and tell you what actually works. We’ve cycled through a lot of Kianao’s gear over the last six months, and my opinions are heavily skewed by how easily things can be cleaned when you're functioning on four hours of sleep.

My absolute favorite standalone piece of hardware is the Panda Teether. I know this isn't wearable jewelry, but it serves the exact same purpose when you need to put her down for two seconds. We were on a flight to Seattle last month, and the air pressure combined with a new tooth coming in created a perfect storm of screaming. I pulled this little silicone panda out of my bag, and the specific flat shape of it perfectly fit into her mouth without gagging her. We got exactly 47 minutes of total silence. It’s 100% food-grade silicone, so when we got to the hotel, I just threw it in a mug of boiling water from the coffee maker to sanitize it. Pure functional perfection.

Now, Maya really loves the Handmade Wood & Silicone Teether Ring. Visually, it’s great. The untreated beechwood looks incredibly nice, and apparently, the wood is naturally antibacterial. But from a purely analytical standpoint? It’s just okay for me. You can’t throw the wooden ring into the dishwasher or boil it, so I've to carefully wipe it down with a damp cloth like I'm maintaining antique furniture. It’s a bit high-maintenance for a guy who just wants to batch-process all the baby gear in the sink at midnight.

We also have a couple of their Wood & Silicone Pacifier Clips. These are actually pretty genius for keeping the pacifier from hitting the dirt at the dog park. The silicone beads on the clip act as a secondary teething surface, which is a nice redundancy feature. The only bug I've found is that at eleven months, her fine motor skills are getting too good, and she spends more time trying to reverse-engineer the metal clip mechanism than actually chewing on the beads.

The biological horror of new teeth

Dr. Thomas tried to explain the actual mechanics of teething to us, and honestly, it’s wrapped in a lot of biological mystery. Apparently, the teeth start developing in the jawbone way before we even see them, and they literally have to cut their way through the gum tissue to emerge.

When she explained that, I suddenly felt terrible for getting frustrated when the baby wakes up crying at 1:00 AM. If I had bone shards slowly slicing through my gums, I wouldn't just be crying; I'd be throwing furniture. We track her temperature pretty obsessively (mostly because I love a good spreadsheet), and while she doesn't get a true medical fever from teething, she definitely runs a little warm—usually hovering around 99.1 degrees. Her cheeks get bright red, and she produces a volume of drool that seems physically impossible for a body of that mass. On Tuesday, we went through 14 bibs. Fourteen.

Which is why having silicone teething items—whether it's a necklace you wear or a toy she holds—is so major. The counter-pressure from biting down on the dense silicone somehow scrambles the pain signals in her gums. It’s like pressing hard on a bruised knee; it doesn't fix the problem, but it overrides the input temporarily so the system doesn't crash.

If you’re currently drowning in drool and trying to save your favorite shirts, you really need to look at Kianao's full collection of teething gear. It’s all food-grade, lab-tested, and really works.

Troubleshooting the drool-pocalypse

So here's your deployment strategy for the next six months. First, accept that your outfits are now just interactive backgrounds for the baby. Buy a silicone necklace that has a breakaway clasp—this is major, because when she suddenly jerks her head backward while holding the beads, you want the necklace to snap off rather than taking your cervical spine with it.

Second, keep a stash of easily cleanable silicone toys in the fridge. Not the freezer—apparently freezing them makes the silicone too hard, which can genuinely bruise their already inflamed gums, which seems incredibly counterproductive. Just chill them so the cold temperature can constrict the blood vessels and reduce the swelling slightly.

And finally, give yourself some grace. You’re going to spend a lot of time frantically googling "is this teething or an ear infection" at three in the morning. (Spoiler: it’s usually teething, but the signs overlap so much that even the pediatrician just kind of shrugs sometimes).

You’re going to survive this phase. Your gold chains might not, but you'll. Just embrace the wearable silicone gear, keep tracking your data, and remember that every tooth that pops through is one step closer to her being able to eat pizza with you.

Before you completely lose your mind trying to figure out which tooth is coming next, grab a few essentials to make this phase easier. Check out Kianao’s teething options below—they've honestly kept our household running.

Messy late-night FAQ about teething

Are silicone teething necklaces honestly safe to use?
They’re incredibly safe if—and only if—you're the one wearing them. If you put it around the baby's neck, it becomes a massive strangulation and choking hazard. I literally treat our teething necklaces like hazardous materials when they aren't clasped securely around my or Maya's neck. Wear it, let the baby chew on it while you hold her, and then put it away out of reach.

How do I clean all this drool-covered silicone?
If it’s pure, 100% food-grade silicone (like the Panda or the Llama teethers), you can be pretty aggressive with it. I just throw them in the top rack of the dishwasher or dunk them in boiling water for a few minutes. If you buy something that has wood attached to it, you can't soak it, or the wood will warp and crack. For those, I just use a damp cloth with some mild dish soap and try not to complain too much about the extra work.

How do I know if she's seriously teething or just cranky?
Honestly, it’s a guessing game half the time. Dr. Thomas said to look for the "trifecta": excessive drooling, chewing on absolutely everything (including your nose), and slightly disrupted sleep. If you look closely at their gums, you can sometimes see a little white bump or a swollen red patch right before the tooth breaches the surface. But sometimes she's just in a terrible mood because I wouldn't let her eat a piece of lint.

Can I put silicone teethers in the freezer?
Our pediatrician heavily advised against the freezer. Apparently, frozen teethers are too rigid and can seriously cause micro-bruising on their swollen gums, which just adds more pain to the equation. Plus, extreme cold can stick to their lips and cheeks. We just keep a rotating stock of them in the butter compartment of our refrigerator. It gets them cold enough to numb the gums without turning them into a weapon.

Do I really need a breakaway clasp?
Yes, 100%. Babies don't understand physics. She will grab that necklace with both hands and suddenly throw her entire body weight backward toward the floor. If that necklace doesn't have a breakaway clasp, it’s going to dig into your neck and potentially hurt you both. The clasp is basically an emergency fail-safe, and I wouldn't buy a piece of teething jewelry without one.