Most teething babies find relief from a combination of gentle pressure on their gums, cold temperatures, and occasionally infant-safe pain relievers. Teeth typically start breaking through between 6 and 12 months of age, and the discomfort tends to come in waves as each new tooth pushes to the surface. The good news: you don’t need much beyond what’s already in your kitchen to help your baby through it.
What Teething Looks Like
The two bottom front teeth usually appear first, followed by the top four front teeth. After that, teeth fill in roughly in pairs, one on each side of the jaw, until all 20 baby teeth are in place around age 2.5 to 3. Lower teeth generally come before upper teeth.
Your baby may drool more than usual, chew on anything within reach, act fussier at feeding time, or have slightly swollen gums in the days before a tooth breaks through. Some babies sail through teething with barely a complaint. Others are miserable for days at a stretch, especially when molars come in later.
One common misconception: teething causes fevers. Research shows that while a baby’s temperature can tick up slightly around the time a tooth erupts, it stays below 100.4°F. Anything at or above that threshold is a true fever and points to something else, like an ear infection or virus, not teething.
Pressure and Cold: The Two Best Tools
Rubbing your baby’s gums with a clean finger or a piece of wet gauze for about two minutes can ease discomfort noticeably. The counter-pressure works against the pressure of the tooth pushing upward. You can do this as often as your baby needs it, and many parents find it calms fussiness quickly, especially before a nap or feeding. For babies older than 12 months, wrapping a small piece of ice in a wet cloth and rubbing it along the gums adds a numbing cold effect.
Cold items also help on their own. Chill a teething ring, a pacifier, or a clean wet washcloth in the refrigerator and let your baby gnaw on it. The cold reduces inflammation in the gum tissue and temporarily dulls the nerve signals causing pain. A few practical tips to keep this safe:
- Refrigerate, don’t freeze. A frozen teething ring or washcloth becomes rock-hard and can bruise tender gums.
- Choose water-filled rings over gel-filled ones. If a new tooth punctures the ring, you want distilled water leaking out, not gel. Some pediatric hospitals recommend avoiding fluid-filled teethers entirely and sticking with solid silicone or rubber rings instead.
- Rotate a few washcloths. Wet three or four, keep them in the fridge, and swap in a fresh cold one when the current one warms up.
When to Try Pain Relievers
If cold and pressure aren’t enough, infant acetaminophen is an option for babies older than 8 weeks. Infant ibuprofen can be used starting at 6 months. Both are dosed by your baby’s weight, not age, so check the packaging or ask your pediatrician for the right amount. These work well for the worst stretches, like nighttime discomfort that’s disrupting sleep, but most parents find they only need them occasionally rather than around the clock.
Products to Avoid
Several popular teething products carry serious risks that outweigh any benefit.
Topical numbing gels and creams containing benzocaine or lidocaine should not be used on teething babies. Benzocaine can trigger a condition where red blood cells lose their ability to carry oxygen effectively, which can be fatal. Lidocaine gels, even prescription versions, have caused seizures, heart problems, and severe brain injuries in infants when too much was absorbed or accidentally swallowed. The FDA has warned specifically against both for teething pain, noting they offer little benefit in the first place since saliva washes them off the gums within minutes.
Amber teething necklaces are another product to skip. They’re marketed with the claim that body heat releases a pain-relieving substance from the amber, but there’s no scientific evidence this works. The real concern is safety. The FDA issued a warning in 2018 after receiving reports of children choking on beads that broke loose and an 18-month-old who was strangled by an amber necklace during a nap. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that infants not wear any jewelry at all.
Homeopathic teething tablets have also drawn FDA scrutiny. Some contained inconsistent levels of belladonna, a toxic plant extract. The safest approach is sticking with the simple physical methods that reliably work: cold, pressure, and chewing.
Feeding and Sleep During Teething
Sore gums can make feeding uncomfortable, especially for breastfed babies who may clamp down or pull away. Offering a cold teething ring a few minutes before a feeding can numb the gums enough to make latching easier. For babies eating solids, chilled foods like cold fruit puree or a refrigerated mesh feeder filled with banana or frozen berries serve double duty as both a meal and gum relief.
Sleep disruptions are often the hardest part of teething for parents. A dose of infant pain reliever 30 minutes before bedtime, on the worst nights, can help your baby settle. Keeping your usual bedtime routine consistent matters here. Babies who associate a predictable sequence of events with sleep tend to resettle faster, even when teething wakes them briefly overnight.
Caring for New Teeth
Once that first tooth breaks through, it needs cleaning. Use a soft-bristled infant toothbrush with a rice grain-sized smear of fluoride toothpaste, twice a day. That tiny amount of fluoride is safe to swallow and starts protecting enamel immediately. Before any teeth appear, wiping your baby’s gums with a damp cloth after feedings gets them used to the routine and clears bacteria from the gum surface. After age 3, increase the toothpaste amount to a pea-sized dab.