Essential oils for teething

I've been taking crash courses of natural medicine as the need arises... I studied herbs for birth before babe was born, learned about herbs that are good for pregnancy and quickly discontinued them when I realized that red raspberry leaf tea caused preterm contractions for me, even though I was well past my 1st trimester when taking it. Smelling lavender essential oil gave me relief from morning sickness for a few weeks, and tea tree oil became my staple for bathroom cleaning when I was questioning the effects of bleach or other cleaners on my developing baby.

Recently babe has been working on cutting eye teeth and my friend Georganne recommended clove oil. I had been using some dye-free Motrin to help her sleep for a couple days, and made an impulse buy of artificially colored and flavored Oragel one day with a cranky babe in the grocery store. I tried that a few times, and it worked but I didn't like the idea of causing harm while treating teething pain (I really try to stay away from food additives with Babe). In the health food store down in the city we found clove essential oil. It works great! I always try this sort of thing on myself first, then on her, so I put some on my finger and applied a dab to my gum. Numbed right up and tasted horrible... but it did numb right up. Did the same for her and after a few pretty funny faces and looking at me like I was totally nuts, we were good to go for the rest of the night.

Later in reading, I learned that you're supposed to dilute it with a carrier oil, we'll just use olive oil because I have that on hand, but just my tiny bit on my finger worked too :) We're thrilled with this solution.