Teething Woes

In the last few weeks Kasen has been not only drooling up a storm, but he's been pulling both ears (the left one more so than the right), and has been biting whatever he can find, from his fingers to our fingers to mini chalkboards to  teething toys. We managed to capture him about to pull on his left ear while also gnawing on his little thumb. Sigh. I need to find ways to get him to stop chewing on his fingers. He just loves them. Grrr.

To make his current sleeping habits even that much more difficult, the teething has also caused him to get up even MORE frequently. I am reluctant to introduce any medicine of sorts given that he is so young. My mother mentioned baby orajel to potentially use on Kasen's sore gums while he's teething, but we quickly found that there was an FDA warning about the usage of baby orajel on babies younger than 2 years of age:

The numbing agent in a number of gels designed to ease the pain of teething can be dangerous or even fatal to babies, the Food and Drug Administration has announced.  CNN.com has more:

Benzocaine is a local anesthetic that’s in products like Anbesol, Orajel & Baby Orajel, Orabase and Hurricaine. The FDA says using benzocaine products to stop mouth and gum pain can cause a rare and sometimes fatal condition called methemoglobinemia. Methemoglobinemia is a blood disorder where the oxygen that’s carried through the blood to the tissue drops to dangerously low levels. In severe cases it can cause death.

The FDA first sounded the alarm on these products in 2006. Since then there have been 29 reports of benzocaine gel-related cases of methemoglobinemia. FDA pharmacist Kellie Taylor says 19 of those cases were in children, 15 of those 19 were children under the age of 2.

The agency issued another warning in 2011. Some of the symptoms to look for include pale, gray, or blue-colored skin, lips and fingernail beds, shortness of breath, headache, light-headedness and rapid heart rate.

“Symptoms can occur within minutes to hours after benozcaine use,” says FDA Pharmacist Mary Ghods said. “They can occur after using the drug for the first time, as well as after several uses.”

The source of the article is here. Scary stuff! Glad that I am so apprehensive in the first place!