Last night was a long one. My poor little babe is struggling with THREE baby teeth popping through his gums all at once, and he woke screaming every hour or less until 7:30 when he decided sleep was overrated and rolled over on his tummy to play, smacking me on the face, pinching my arms and cooing.
So I had teething on the mind this morning when I sat down at my computer. I Googled it, just to see what came up, and discovered a line of chewable jewelry for moms called Chewable Jewels, made out of the same stuff as teething rings. I can’t really wear jewelry anymore since Wes just wants to pull it off and eat it, so it sounded like a great idea. I was picturing jewel-toned beaded necklaces, funky colourful stuff that could actually be wearable. It’s not. In the photos on the website it just looks like a chew toy on a cord. It’s about as stylish as my main accessory these days, a pacifier on a string.
Hey there’s an idea - stylish pacifier keepers, channeling our pre-baby fashion sense. It could look like a pretty, modern metal pin with a satiny cord instead of a big plastic button with a grinning cartoon animal. Or maybe that’s just the sleep deprivation talking.
So with the idea of chewable jewelry in mind, I did some more Googling and found tons of sites selling amber necklaces for babies that are purported to be an ‘ancient’ teething aid with analgesic properties when worn next to the skin.
Natural pain relief provided by Amber has many therapeutic remedies. Amber works by placing the necklace on your body, this allows your skin to warm the amber beads which releases healing oils which are then absorbed into the blood stream.
The active ingredient is succinic acid which is fossilised resin produced by plants 40 – 50 million years ago. In nature the resin would have been used by the tree as a nautral antibiotic against infection, viruses and physical attack. The tree would use the resin like a plaster or wound dressing. Now the resin has been fossilised, its healing properties have been captured in the resin which are release once the amber has been warmed. Nobel-prize winner Robert Koch (1886) was the pioneer of modern bacteriology proved that succinic acid has a very positive influence on the human body.
In the 1930’s and 40’s, European biochemists discovered that succinic acid is an amino acid created naturally in every cell of the body capable of aerobic respiration, participating in the citric acid, or Krebs cycle . This is how carbohydrates, fats, and proteins are metabolized into energy. Wearing amber may also protect us against the negative influences of electrical equipment like computers, televisions, mobile phone and microwave ovens. Part of what’s amazing about amber is that the chemical properties of the resin which when formed acted as a natural embalming agent, with both drying and anti-microbial properties. Ancient Egyptians actually used pine resin as an embalming agent, and doctors in the Civil War, lacking anything else, would sometimes slap tree resin on a wound as a disinfectant and saved lives that way.
- Amberbebe.com
I don’t know enough about this stuff to refute the claims made here, but I find it hard to believe.
It just seems like a bad idea to me. I know the amber necklaces aren’t for chewing, but if the baby can chew it, he will. Also, what if the strand breaks and the baby chokes? Amberbebe says its necklaces are knotted after each bead to prevent them all scattering if the necklace breaks, but what about the bead at the breaking point? What if the necklace wraps around his neck and makes it hard to breathe? Amberbebe also sells soothers made of amber. What about the effects on baby teeth? Is amber soft enough not to hurt it? Is it orthodontically correct?
Opinions?
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