Worth it Wednesday: Hyland’s Teething Tablets

“And the wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws.“

Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

Sound familiar? To anyone with a teething baby (except for the lucky few whose babies are just sent here to make us jealous), the image of the wild things may seem pretty recognizable, especially in the middle of the night when the rest of the world is sleeping peacefully. Those teeth can be terrible, alright!

Lately, V (16 months) has been cutting her canine/ eye teeth, making her even more of a whiny, clingy mess than usual. That is, until I pop her a Wonder Pill: Hyland’s Teething Tablets. Leaving our baby yoga class recently (a post on those coming soon!), a friend and I were talking about how we can’t live without our Hyland’s when another mother admitted she had never heard of the stuff. It hadn’t occurred to me that some moms might not know of this– so I realized it was my DUTY to review it for Austin Moms Blog!

Hyland’s teething tablets, in short, are a homeopathic combo of natural ingredients that relieve many of the fun symptoms of teething (pain, inflammation, fever, irritability, restlessness . . . as if I need to tell you!). If you aren’t familiar with homeopathy, it is an odd little science that believes in the “law of similars.” Basically, practitioners find ingredients that cause certain symptoms in a healthy person, and dilute them to a microscopic essence of their original form to treat those same symptoms in an ailing person. Sounds weird, I know, and some call it a hoax. All I know is that for me, it has historically worked (I will never forget a little bottle I bought at Whole Foods in college for stomach issues due to “overindulgence in food and drink.” My former roommates can attest to its uncanny ability to calm a hangover or simple overindulgence on pizza!).

So if we haven’t lost you yet with all the homeopathic mumbo-jumbo, let me just tell you that it works about 90% of the time to chill out my little teething crazy bird. 90% ain’t bad when you consider what giving your child this natural remedy doesn’t give them: benzocaine, parabens, artificial ingredients and colors, a numb mouth (treatments like baby Orajel just numb their mouths and gag reflexes– not good, especially for nursing babies). And even when it doesn’t do the trick, or if it’s been more than the suggested seven days of straight use, I just switch to Ibuprofen. In full disclosure, it did get pulled off the shelf last year for more testing on its use of the Belladonna plant, but the FDA now agrees that the minuscule amounts are harmless. Hyland’s representative Dr. Iris R. Bell argues that “typically a 10-pound child would need to ingest 1,000 Hyland’s Teething Tablets (at least 6 bottles of 125 tablets) to exhibit even the first possible side effect of Belladonna.” I can definitely tell you that mothers all over Austin cheered when it came back on the shelves!

So where do you find it in town? To shop locally you can hit the People‘s pharmacies or even Whole Foods, and you may be surprised to learn you can often find it at a regular HEB (my HEB at Slaughter and Manchaca usually has it for about $6), Walgreens, or even CVS. In fact, the Hyland’s website even has  a handy-dandy store locator to help you when you can’t handle one more minute of your whiny, clinging, sleepless little wild thing.

So is it a bunch of placebo-effect B.S., or is it a Wonder Pill?!

What other teething remedies truly work for your child? Don’t be shy . . . Your idea might help another mama who is losing her mind.