age for teething babies
It's a well-known fact that, once a baby reaches teething age, everything goes into the mouth. For nursing mothers, it can be a frustration when the child you've been waking yourself every two hours to feed suddenly bites you hard, but try not to take it personally. When babies start teething, the order of the process generally proceeds along in fairly predictable stages. First come the two lower middle teeth; next, the four upper middle teeth arrive, and after that come incisors, the furthest forward molars and finally the back molars. If there's one milestone many parents wish they could delay (or at least skip to the end immediately), it's teething. Sure, your kid will look adorable when he smiles and shows those two tiny bottom teeth, but the process of getting them isn't much fun -- for your baby or for you. Some babies don't develop their first teeth until 7 months or more, and a few may even be a year old before showing a single tooth. Like many things about babies, you can't schedule progress on someone else's age chart: your baby will develop teeth when he or she is readyand whether you're ready or not. It can take several years for all 20 teeth to complete the tooth eruption. Though the process of teething is sometimes referred to as cutting teeth, when teeth emerge through the gums they do not cut through the flesh. When to Expect Teething to Begin. Most babies' teeth begin to erupt between the ages of 4 to 6 months, though for some it may be earlier or later, Dr. Josen says. And no matter what Grandma says, when your child's first tooth pops in, it has nothing to do with smarts. The age the baby cuts his or her first tooth depends on family history of teething and nothing more, says Jill Lasky, D.D.S., a pediatric dentist at Lasky Pediatric Dental Group in Los Angeles. Infant development experts say that teething usually starts when your baby is around four months old, and continues until he or she is about two years old, at which time you get a reprieve until about five years old when the baby teeth start being replaced by grown-up teeth. The first teeth may be the easiest for many babies because the teeth are sharp and thin, so they make it through the gum tissue with less trouble than the broad molars do. An infant who's cutting teeth can be one miserable companion, but some babies hardly seem to notice the change. A 9-month-old infant with a visible right lower central incisor. Teething is the process by which an infant's first teeth (the deciduous teeth, often called baby teeth or milk teeth) sequentially appear by emerging through the gums, typically arriving in pairs. Teething usually begins between six and eight months. Ideally, you've been running a clean, damp washcloth over your baby's gums every day. If not, now's a great time to start. The washcloth can keep bacteria from building up in your baby's mouth. When your baby's first teeth appear, switch to a small, soft-bristled toothbrush. Until your child learns to spit — at about age 3 — use a smear of fluoride toothpaste no bigger than the size of a grain of rice. It's also time to think about regular dental checkups.
Around four months old.