The Mesh Feeder Trauma and Silicone Teethers

I'm standing at the kitchen sink at 3:14 in the morning, wearing a dressing gown that smells faintly of sour milk and despair, aggressively attacking a tiny nylon mesh bag with an old toothbrush. In the background, Maya is wailing from the safety of her cot, her chin shining with an absurd volume of drool that has completely soaked through her sleepsuit. I'm trying to remove what I suspect is a piece of fossilised banana from the tiny, microscopic squares of this supposedly helpful teething net, and I'm quietly losing my mind.

This was my life six months ago. The dark ages. The period I now refer to as the mesh era, which feels entirely accurate for the amount of medieval suffering it caused me.

Before I became a father, I assumed teething involved a bit of mild fussing and perhaps a chilled piece of carrot. I didn't anticipate the sheer volume of bodily fluids involved, nor the fact that my twin daughters would attempt to soothe their inflamed gums by gnawing on the coffee table, the skirting boards, and occasionally each other, like a pair of over-caffeinated beavers. And I certainly didn't realise how utterly useless most of the products sold to desperate parents actually are.

Someone in my NCT WhatsApp group had recommended those mesh food feeders. You know the ones. They look like a tiny fishnet stocking attached to a plastic handle. The premise is sound enough—you put a piece of cold fruit inside, the baby chews on it, the cold soothes the gums, and the mesh prevents them from choking on a massive chunk of apple. In theory, brilliant. In practice, a biological weapon.

The absolute horror of the tiny net

Here's a fact that the packaging on those mesh bags conveniently leaves out: when a baby aggressively gums a piece of fruit through a nylon net for twenty minutes, the food fuses with the fabric at a molecular level. You can't just rinse it. You can't just stick it in the dishwasher. You might as well try to wash a used tea bag.

I spent weeks boiling these little nets, soaking them in hot soapy water, and picking out minuscule fragments of strawberry seed with a toothpick while questioning every life choice that had led me to this moment. They permanently stained a sort of bruised purple colour, and no matter how much I scrubbed, they always smelled faintly of decaying melon.

Then, during a desperate late-night scrolling session while Zoe was actively trying to chew on my collarbone, I discovered that silicone fresh food dummy things existed. I ordered one immediately, a popular New Zealand brand design that looked like a giant dummy with tiny holes punched in the silicone teat, and frankly, I've never looked back.

Why pure silicone changes the entire game

The difference between mesh and a food-grade silicone pouch is the difference between washing a carpet and wiping down a kitchen counter. You just pop the pouch open, dump the remnants of whatever mashed fruit the baby has abandoned, and rinse it under the tap.

But the real genius of the silicone feeder is that it doubles as an actual teether even when it's empty. The top has these little raised ridges that the twins loved to bite down on, and because the whole thing is flexible, they could really go to town on it without me worrying they were going to chip a tooth. You can throw it in the steriliser, you can boil it, and it doesn't hold onto smells.

When the twins were really suffering, mostly around the time those horrific double molars decided to make an appearance, the silicone feeder became our primary survival tool. We were going through a frankly alarming amount of Calpol, and I needed something else to throw at the problem. I started filling the silicone pouch with frozen blueberries, which was a terrible idea because it looked like they had been drinking blood, but it definitely calmed them down.

If you're dealing with teething twins, or even just one very unhappy baby, you need a rotation of these things. You can't rely on a single device, because the exact second you need it, it'll be under the sofa covered in dog hair. Our collection of baby teethers became a literal scattergun approach to pain management, with various silicone shapes strategically placed in every room of the house.

What the doctor actually said about teething

There was a point in February where Maya felt like a small radiator and was producing enough saliva to fill a paddling pool. I panicked, obviously, and dragged both girls to the GP, completely convinced we were dealing with some sort of obscure tropical disease despite having not left London in a year.

My GP, a man who always looks incredibly tired and speaks to me very slowly, explained that the line between a teething symptom and a sick baby is actually quite blurry, which wasn't exactly the reassuring certainty I was looking for. He mentioned that while drooling, a bit of a rash around the mouth from said drool, and general grumpiness are standard, a raging fever is not seriously a teething thing, meaning Maya's 39-degree temperature was an entirely separate ear infection that just happened to coincide with a new tooth.

He also pointed out that you're not supposed to give babies rock-hard frozen plastic rings to chew on. Apparently, the extreme cold combined with a solid surface can seriously bruise their gums or cause frostbite on their lips, which is a terrifying thought. The silicone food pouch gets around this nicely because the frozen food is wrapped inside a softer, flexible barrier, so the cold sort of radiates through gently rather than shocking their system.

Someone at a playgroup also suggested an amber teething necklace, which I ignored immediately because tying a string of hard, breakable choking hazards around the neck of a thrashing two-year-old seems like a spectacular way to end up in the back of an ambulance.

The backup squad (because one teether is never enough)

While the food pouch is brilliant for when you're at home and have the energy to chop up a cucumber, it's completely useless when you're standing in the queue at the post office and your child suddenly decides they need to chew on something right this second. For out-and-about emergencies, I rely heavily on standard, solid silicone toys.

I bought the Panda Teether on a whim, mostly because I liked the little bamboo detail, but it has genuinely become Zoe's absolute favourite object in the world. It’s flat enough that she could hold it properly even when her coordination was rubbish, and it’s entirely one piece of silicone, meaning there are no tiny crevices for old milk to hide in and go rancid. It mostly lives in the front pocket of my changing bag, covered in lint, until I desperately need to buy myself five minutes of peace on the bus.

On the flip side, I also picked up the Handmade Wood & Silicone Teether Ring. I'll be completely honest here: I bought it because it looked very nice and aesthetic, and I had this brief, delusional fantasy that my children's toys could match the living room decor. It's lovely, and the tactile beads are great, but dealing with untreated wood gives me minor anxiety. When a baby inevitably drops it in a puddle of mashed peas, you can't just boil it or chuck it in the dishwasher because the wood will warp or split. You have to carefully wipe it down with a damp cloth like you're cleaning an antique, which is not really the energy I bring to parenting at 7 PM on a Tuesday.

Then there was the Squirrel Teether. I bought the mint green one thinking they could share it. I'm an idiot. The twins fought over this tiny silicone squirrel so aggressively I had to put it in time-out on top of the fridge for three days. The little acorn shape on the side is apparently the exact perfect size to reach the back gums, and Maya would guard it with her life.

Desperate acts and breastmilk lollies

If you're reading this while holding a screaming, drooling infant, the best piece of advice I can give you is to stop trying to make things complicated. The silicone feeder pouch is brilliant, but you don't need to be pureeing organic kale to put in it. In fact, if your baby is under six months and hasn't started solids yet, you shouldn't be putting food in it at all.

What you can do, and what essentially saved my life when the girls were around four months old and starting to teeth early, is make a breastmilk ice lolly. You take the cap that comes with the feeder, stand it upright, pour a bit of breastmilk (or formula) into the silicone pouch, snap it all shut, and freeze it. The result is a perfectly sized, highly familiar-tasting block of ice that fits safely inside the silicone teat.

You basically have to wash the thing the exact second it drops from their mouth to prevent whatever you put inside from drying into cement, and trying to open the childproof clasp while your hands are covered in baby spit is a special kind of physical challenge, but it works. It genuinely buys you twenty minutes of silence.

Teething is, unfortunately, one of those things you just have to sit out. There's no magic cure, no matter what the people on Instagram try to sell you. But having a tool that really works, doesn't grow mould, and doesn't require a toothbrush to clean at three in the morning makes the whole miserable process slightly more bearable.

If you're currently trapped under a drooling baby and your old mesh feeder is looking suspiciously grey, do yourself a favour and throw it in the bin. You can check out the proper silicone teethers here before the next tooth decides to ruin your weekend.

Questions I frantically Googled at 2 AM

Do I really need a silicone food feeder if I already have normal teethers?

Technically no, but a standard teether doesn't dispense cold food. When they're really hurting, just chewing on a piece of rubber isn't enough. The silicone pouch lets you introduce cold fruit or milk safely, which numbs the gum while they chew. It's essentially a distraction technique mixed with mild pain relief, and it works infinitely better than a standard chew toy for the really bad days.

How on earth do you clean these silicone pouches?

Immediately. That's the secret. Don't let it sit on the highchair tray for four hours. The second they drop it, run it under warm soapy water. You can flip the silicone teat inside out (unlike the cursed mesh nets) to make sure there are no strawberry bits hiding in the corners. I throw ours in the top rack of the dishwasher most nights, and occasionally boil them in a pan of water for a few minutes if I feel they need a proper sterilisation.

Can I put normal ice cubes in the feeder?

I wouldn't. Normal ice cubes are too hard and freeze too aggressively, which can honestly damage the delicate tissue on their gums. If you want to use ice, freeze breastmilk or formula, or make a very slushy puree. You want something that will melt relatively quickly and yield to pressure, rather than a solid rock.

Is it normal for my baby to have a massive fever while teething?

According to every doctor I've frantically bothered, no. A very slight rise in body temperature is normal because of the soreness in the mouth, but a proper, blazing fever (anything over 38C or 100.4F) is usually a sign of an actual virus or infection that has opportunistically struck while their immune system is distracted. If they're boiling hot, ignore the teeth and call the GP.

When do they genuinely stop teething?

I’ll let you know when it happens. The NHS says most children have all their milk teeth by the time they're two and a half. My girls are two, and we're currently battling the second molars, which are massive and seem to take weeks to cut through. Basically, keep the silicone toys in the fridge until they go to school, just to be safe.