Beissringe Silikon: The Ugly Truth About Teething Advice

Let's rewind to Maya at four months old. I was wearing a gray nursing tank that smelled strongly of sour milk and desperation, and it had this weird yellow yogurt stain on the left strap that I had completely given up on washing out. It was a Tuesday. It was raining. And within a span of roughly three hours, I received three entirely different pieces of unsolicited advice on how to handle my daughter’s sudden, violent drooling phase.

My mother-in-law called first. She called my cell phone, which I had specifically put on 'Do Not Disturb', but she somehow bypassed it because she's basically a technological wizard with ignoring boundaries. She told me I needed to dip a clean washcloth in a tiny bit of whiskey and rub it directly onto Maya's gums.

I just stared at the wall for a full minute after she hung up. Whiskey. For a four-month-old infant. I tried to picture myself pouring Jack Daniels into a baby washcloth at ten in the morning and casually swabbing my infant's mouth like some sort of 1920s saloon bartender. Dave, my husband, was sitting across the room and I just looked at him and said, "Your mother wants us to liquor up the baby." He didn't even look up from his laptop. He just sighed and said, "Yeah, she did that to me, which explains a lot actually."

Then I took Maya to my local coffee shop to get out of the house, and the barista leaned over the espresso machine and whispered that I needed an amber teething necklace because the earth's natural energy absorbs the pain. No.

And finally, Dave, who had spent the entire previous night reading unhinged reddit threads while I actually, you know, held the screaming baby, announced that we needed liquid-filled plastic rings chilled in the freezer to exactly minus eighteen degrees Celsius. I was running on four shots of espresso and three hours of broken sleep and I just wanted someone to tell me exactly what to buy so she would stop screaming at my collarbone. Exhausting.

My awful freezer mistake

We tried Dave's freezing method first because he had a whole spreadsheet of reviews and I was too tired to argue. We bought these thick plastic rings filled with some mystery neon blue gel. I stuck them in the back of the freezer next to a bag of frozen peas from 2019 because that's what everyone says to do, right? You freeze the teething toys.

Well, absolutely not.

Fast forward to later that afternoon. I handed this block of arctic ice to my miserable daughter. She shoved it into her mouth and immediately started screaming harder, because the frozen plastic literally stuck to her wet inner lip like that kid on the freezing flagpole in A Christmas Story. I panicked and pulled it away, and she had this horrible bright red mark on her skin. I felt like the absolute worst mother in the world. I cried in the bathroom for twenty minutes.

Plus, one of those plastic rings somehow got punctured two days later and leaked neon blue chemical fluid all over my white West Elm duvet. My mother bought us that duvet for our wedding. It was ruined. Crap.

What Dr. Miller actually told me

So I finally dragged myself and my drooly, miserable baby to the doctor. Dr. Miller’s waiting room has that exact same wooden bead maze toy that every single doctor's office on earth has, which Leo, my older kid, was violently shaking while Maya screamed in her stroller. Maya was wearing a yellow onesie that said "Little Sunshine" but she was acting like a category five hurricane.

When Dr. Miller finally came in, I specifically asked him about Beissringe Silikon—because I had seen these solid silicone teething rings all over my Instagram feed and they looked slightly less toxic than the leaky blue plastic things that ruined my bedding. He basically gave me a total rundown of why almost everything I was doing was completely wrong. But gently. He is a nice guy.

He told me that teething rings should ALWAYS go in the refrigerator, never the freezer. I guess frozen stuff is way too hard on their delicate little gums and can really cause minor contact frostbite, which completely explained the red mark on Maya's lip. He also mentioned that solid, food-grade silicone is basically the holy grail for this phase because it doesn't need all the nasty chemical plasticizers that traditional plastics do to stay soft.

The grossest thing I used to do at the park

I need to confess something really embarrassing here. With Leo, my first kid, whenever he dropped his teether on the floor at the park, I'd just pop it into my own mouth, aggressively suck the dirt and mulch off of it, and hand it right back to him.

I thought I was building his immune system. I thought I was being one of those cool, relaxed moms who doesn't obsess over germs. I thought the whole "mother's spit is magical" thing was real science.

Dr. Miller looked horrified when I casually mentioned this. Apparently, licking your baby's teether or pacifier is a fantastic way to transfer your nasty adult mouth bacteria directly into their pristine, developing oral microbiome. He specifically said something about Streptococcus mutans, which I guess is the specific bacteria that causes cavities in teeth? I don't totally understand the biology, but basically he told me I was literally handing my baby cavity germs before he even had teeth. So yeah. Stop doing that. Now I just pack, like, three extra silicone rings in my diaper bag instead of using my mouth as a human washing machine.

It's not just about the pain

This is the part that honestly blew my mind. I always thought teethers were purely a pain relief mechanism. Like baby ibuprofen, but chewable.

But my friend Jessica is a pediatric speech therapist. We were drinking coffee at her kitchen table last month—she has those beautiful white quartz counters that never look dirty, which drives me crazy—while Maya was vigorously gnawing on her pure silicone teether. It's the one with the little textured bumps all over it. My absolute favorite because she can really grip it perfectly with her tiny, chubby hands without dropping it every four seconds.

Jessica casually mentioned that chewing on these things is really an intense muscular workout for babies. Something about how around four or five months, they use the resistance of the rubbery material to figure out where their tongue is in space? And how to coordinate their jaw hinges? I don't totally understand the biomechanics of it, but she said it’s literally the physical prep work for eating real solid food later on.

Every time Maya chomped down on that ring, she was practicing the exact muscular coordination she would eventually need to chew actual food, and even the lip control needed to start talking. She is basically training her face muscles so she can eventually yell "NO" at me in the supermarket. Wild.

My very honest thoughts on wood versus silicone

Okay, let's talk products because I've bought entirely too many of them in moments of 3 AM weakness.

I really love the aesthetic of the wood and silicone combo rings. They look so beautiful and neutral in nursery photos, and Kianao makes these silicone and beech wood teethers that are honestly gorgeous. But I'm going to be COMPLETELY real with you—they're mildly annoying to clean. You can't boil wood. You can't throw wood in the dishwasher unless you want it to crack and splinter. You have to carefully wipe it down with a damp cloth and let it air dry.

When you're running on zero sleep, carefully wiping anything is a massive chore. I still use the wooden ones when we're just hanging out on the living room rug and I can actively monitor the floor drops, because Maya really does love the sensory contrast between the hard, natural grain of the wood and the squishy chew of the silicone. She will switch back and forth between the two textures for twenty minutes straight.

But for throwing in my messy bag? For absolute bulletproof convenience? Give me 100% solid silicone every single time. Pure silicone is indestructible. You can boil it in a giant spaghetti pot for five minutes to completely sterilize it. I used to just toss Leo's completely textured silicone teething ring onto the top rack of the dishwasher every single night with our dinner plates. It survived two full years of constant abuse, boiling water, and being abandoned under car seats, and it still looks brand new.

Anyway, if you're currently drowning in endless baby gear research and your eyes are glazing over, you might want to just check out a few simple baby care staples and call it a day. Don't overcomplicate this whole thing.

The twelve month molar nightmare

Just when you think you're totally done with the teething phase and you can finally sleep again, the molars arrive. Molars are from hell.

With Leo, his big back teeth started coming in right around 13 months. We were visiting my parents for the weekend, and his regular, perfectly round teething rings suddenly couldn't reach far enough back into his mouth. He kept trying to shove his entire fist to the back of his throat to massage his gums, and he ended up gagging himself and throwing up pureed carrots all over my dad's favorite recliner. It was a complete disaster.

Dave ended up frantically searching online and found this elongated animal-shaped silicone teether that had these long, textured legs. Leo could stick the legs all the way to the back of his gums safely without choking himself. I highly think making sure you've a longer shape in your toy rotation once they hit a year old, because those wide round rings just won't cut it for molars.

Final thoughts before I go reheat my coffee

Anyway, the point is that you don't need mystical amber necklaces, and you definitely don't need to rub whiskey on your child's gums. You also don't need dangerous frozen plastic rings that leak blue dye on your nice bedding.

Just get a couple of good, highly textured solid silicone options. Keep them in the refrigerator, not the freezer. Wash them in the dishwasher. And please, for the love of everything, stop sucking the dirt off them with your own mouth. Seriously.

If you're still awake and want to stock up before the drool flood really begins, you might want to grab a few safe teething options here so you aren't panic-ordering random plastic junk at two in the morning like Dave did.

The messy questions I asked my doctor (FAQ)

Can I put the silicone teether in the freezer?

Oh god, please don't. I ruined a beautiful West Elm duvet and traumatized my daughter doing this. Just stick it in the regular fridge next to the milk. It gets plenty cold enough to numb their sore gums without turning into a dangerous, rock-hard weapon that sticks to their lips.

How many teethers do I honestly need?

You need more than one, but you don't need twenty. I like having three in rotation. One is usually in the fridge getting cold, one is currently being thrown on the floor by the baby, and one is lost in the bottom of my diaper bag covered in cracker crumbs. Rotating different shapes also keeps them from getting bored.

When should I start offering a teether?

Maya started aggressively drooling and chewing on her own hands around three-and-a-half months. That's when I introduced a simple silicone ring. At first, they just sort of smack themselves in the face with it because their coordination is terrible, but by four months they usually figure out how to get it into their mouth to chomp on it.

How do you clean the ones with wooden rings?

Do NOT put them in the dishwasher or boil them. I learned this the hard way when a beautiful wooden ring cracked in half after a run through the sanitizing cycle. You just have to wipe the wood part with a damp cloth. It's annoying, but they look so cute that I put up with the inconvenience.

What if they only want to chew on my fingers?

Yeah, Leo went through a phase where my index finger was his favorite chew toy. It hurts incredibly badly once those sharp little front teeth honestly pop through. Whenever he went for my hand, I just gently swapped my finger out for a cold silicone teether. It took a few days of him getting mad at me, but he eventually accepted the bait-and-switch.