Teething and sickness - coincidence?
Hi parents!
We have a lovely little girl who is 7 months old. She started teething after 4 months and her bottom two teeth erupted around the 5.5 month mark. But, the bottom two teeth were accompanied by her first cold and ear infection.
All that has now been sorted but her top two teeth are erupting and now she has croup and a cold again!
Is this all just coincidence or do they get snotty sick every time they pop a tooth? I can't imagine her being sick every few weeks for the next 3 years.
She goes to daycare 3 days a week, on solids, breast and formula fed, fully immunised.
Posted Nov 4, 2014, 6:46 PM UTC
78
Well, first of all baby teeth take way less than three years to come in :) Second, you can't immunize against the common cold (the virus mutates too quickly), and the flu shot only vaccinates against the strain which has been statistically projected to be the likely culprit in a given year, so that's not a factor here.
Third, it is possible to get flu-like symptoms while teething (because those symptoms are just the body's standard "WTF, I don't like this!" response) - fever is comparatively common, but I've never heard of ear infections or croup/cough as "side-effects."
My guess (and I'm not a doctor, so take this for what it's worth) is that it's a coincidence coupled with confirmation bias. Kids in daycare get sick a lot, especially at first. That would be much more likely than it being caused by the teething.
Yeah her body is definitely going "wtf". I know you cant immunise against a cold or croup, I think I just naively hoped/thought she wont get as sick as people always say.