Baby Amber Teething Review

Hello everybody.  Thanks for stopping by.

I hope you have all become visitors to my wife's blog as well.  But for those of you who haven't checked it out yet, right now would be a great time to do so.  She is currently reviewing the product and service from BabyAmberTeething.com and has arranged with them to give away some free amber for one of her lucky readers.  The review and rules for the giveaway are available here.  I've decided to offer my opinion on Baby Amber Teething because I have had my own experiences with their product and service.  

The Trophy Wife and I have both had some experience using natural remedies.  I was introduced to the idea of natural/alternative medicine around the age of twelve.  While my experiences never shook my faith in "Western" medicine, I am open to the idea of alleviating minor aches and injuries with simple, natural treatments.  After all, if you trace the treatment of any ailment back more than a hundred or so years, you will generally find a natural treatment that was effective enough to be commonly used.  Amber has been purported to have healing properties since the time of Hippocrates.  It is specifically marketed as a teething aid and has been used as such since prior to World War II.  It is worn as jewelry and the heat of the skin releases Succinic acid which is absorbed through the skin to alleviate pain and reduce inflammation.  It is not supposed to be put in the mouth or used internally.

I have read several product reviews online, and I find that these reviews are largely lacking information in one major area: customer service.  In my experience the level of customer service provided by a company is a make-or-break variable in whether or not I choose to use their product.  I did not initiate contact with Baby Amber Teething, my wife contacted them in her blog promotion process.  Baby Amber Teething was prompt to reply, with an actual human-written e-mail.  We've contacted them a handful of times over the course of our dealings, and they have always been prompt with information and a pleasure to deal with.  These people are appreciative of their customers and are strong advocates of their product.

Baby Amber Teething is located in Lithuania, as much of the world's amber is found on the coast of the Baltic Sea.  Considering the delays and expense of international shipping, I found their $5 flat rate to be very reasonable.  The shipping was quick as well, but delays in that area are unpredictable and rarely the fault of the manufacturer.  Our product arrived sixteen days after we made our selections, which I found to be acceptable.

We ordered the following items: A baby necklace and a small adult necklace, then later an adult bracelet and a larger and more decorated adult necklace.  Everything came with a small hemp bag to store the jewelry and a few extra amber beads.  The jewelry was well constructed and very nice looking.  It looked exactly like what we were expecting from the pictures on the website, and we were happy to see that Baby Amber Teething accurately represented their product in their marketing.

The Princess loves all jewelry of any kind.  So she was thrilled when she was given the small adult necklace.  She doesn't have any ailments so for her the amber is purely an aesthetic decoration.  The Trophy Wife started with wearing the small necklace and then switched to the larger and more extravagant necklace when it arrived.  She was complaining of a sore neck and shoulders before she began wearing the amber, but she claims the aches were alleviated when she began wearing the jewelry.  However, she stopped wearing the jewelry when she discovered that the shoulder and neck aches were distracting her from the powerful morning sickness that she was experiencing.  She loves the design and looks great in the necklace (see the pic on her blog) so I guarantee that it will see frequent rotation in her wide array of adornments.

The Chunky Monkey took to his necklace right away.  He was able to wear it all day and never tried to tug it off or put it in his mouth.  I would have to say that the necklace did a good job of alleviating his teething irritation.  He did not seem as owly or impatient on the days that he wore it.  We did leave it off of him occasionally (more because we forgot to put it on him in the morning) and those were the days that he seemed crankier and more sensitive in his mouth area.  I also love the way he looks in it.  With his curly blonde hair and mischievous smirk I think it makes him look like a baby version of Patrick Swayze from Point Break.

I have been suffering from De Quervain's tenosynovitis since August of last year.  I began wearing the adult bracelet to see if it would alleviate some of the pain in my thumb and wrist.  The bracelet we received does not have a clasp, it used a flexible wire that retained its shape.  It was made up of 130 or so tiny amber beads.  I have pretty big wrists, so I was worried that it might not fit me well.  I was pleasantly surprised that it fit me quite well.  If I had to do it again I would have chosen a style of bracelet that used the larger round or oval beads, as my arm hair would occasionally get caught between the tiny beads.  It wasn't really painful, but it was annoying and it threw off my plan to wear it while sleeping.

So here's the big question: Did it work?  I'm going to say yes.  The pain in my thumb and wrist wasn't as sharp or ongoing when I was wearing the bracelet.  As I said before, Chunky Monkey seemed to feel some relief from his teething woes when he wore his amber as well.  I understand that there is a chance that my relief and my sense of relief in C.M. could be due more to the placebo effect than any real result of wearing the jewelry, but there is value in that as well.  When it comes to minor aches and pains, thinking you feel better is the most important part.

I would give this company and their product my wholehearted recommendation.  They were a pleasure to work with throughout the ordering process, and had the expertise to quickly answer any questions.  Their jewelry looks great and is very competitively priced.  As far as I can tell their product fulfills all of the claims they make as to amber's healing properties.  If you have a teething baby or are looking for some great amber jewelry, you should definitely check out BabyAmberTeething.com.

But You Should Have Seen The Other Guy

The Chunky Monkey can move!  

We've known ever since he was in the womb that this little man wouldn't be satisfied to stay still, but his progress in terms of locomotion and velocity has been remarkable.  He started crawling a few days before last Halloween when he was seven months old.  By eight months old he started pulling himself up on objects.  This is actually pretty standard development for a baby, but when his sister was the same age, she was content to sit still.  The Princess was that baby that you could put down and know with reasonable certainty that she would remain where she was placed until you came back and moved her again.  So his normal development is remarkable to me.

When he started to pull himself to a standing position, he would only do so in the bathtub.  To this day his favorite bath-time game is Daddy wants you to sit down NOW!, though For the love of God, PLEASE stop drinking the bathwater! remains a close runner-up.

Mommy had to take that picture.  You can see Daddy's arm readied in case of a slippery grip.  

For a while he only wanted to stand while in the bathtub, but nothing lasts very long when they're that age.  All too soon he was pulling himself up on his toys, the furniture, and the legs of taller people.  Now he is letting go once he gets up there, enjoying a few seconds of unsupported standing glory before gravity returns him to his usual altitude.  Sometimes he meets a few obstacles on his way back down, which has given him the look of a prizefighter.

Although I have no idea where he learned that world weary stare,  I think its safe to say that this photograph was taken just prior to naptime. 

The silver lining in my son's self-inflicted facial contusions is that they all occur on the left side of his face.  If he is trying to catch himself with his left hand it may be that he is left-hand-dominant.  If that is the case his sinister condition will give him a leg up should he follow a career in professional baseball.  It's worth a shot anyway.

Soon he will be walking, running, climbing trees and chasing the dog.  I imagine I'll see several more bruises in the future, though I don't imagine they will work as much of a deterrent. At least I'll get my exercise trying to keep up.

Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind

Here in the Midwest we are smack in the middle of the gray days of winter.  These are the days when a single snowflake drifting toward the ground inspires a child's mind to dreams of speeding down the nearest hill with wanton disregard for personal safety.  Fantasies of ruby cheeked glee while narrowly missing a wide array of obstacles spring to mind with every ominous weather report.  Sledding is quite possibly the greatest thing that Old Man Winter has to offer.  At least that's how I remember it.

I remember two distinct sledding hills from when I was growing up.  There were others, but these were the best.

The first one I remember was the front yard of the house next door to mine.  I lived in that house for seven years and in that time there were two owners.  Both of them were very nice about letting the neighborhood kids use their awesome hill.  On the left side of the hill there was a row of huge juniper bushes that, when covered with snow, made deep and mysterious forts where we plotted various campaigns and stored the necessary ammo to pull off the most daring of maneuvers.  On the right stood the house itself.  At the bottom of the hill stood a line of enormous Poplar trees, ready to receive the unworthy sledder in their painfully unforgiving embrace.  There was a three-foot opening between the trees, which would afford us another few seconds to eject before colliding with a fence that ran the length of the hill.  All in all there was perhaps forty feet of sledding glory to be obtained with each run.  Long before snowboarding became popular I remember standing upright on my toboggan and braving the slopes.  I hear that today the pros strap themselves to their boards.  Bunch of sissies, the lot of them.

The next was in the same neighborhood, about a half mile away from my house.  This was where the neighborhood kids would congregate to risk our collective skins for a few moments of pure adrenaline.  It was an empty lot between two houses, behind which was an open common area.  The hill was wide and steep and free of perilous obstacles, which meant we had to make our own.  A few logs stolen from some poor sap's woodpile can be covered in hard-packed snow and makes for an excellent ramp.  With superb aim, an expert could catch a foot or two of air, but it felt like yards when you hit it and miles when you reacquainted yourself with the hard, hard ground.  There number of children using the slope could always be figured by adding a dozen or so to the maximum number of kids the hill could safely accommodate, so if we were unable to build our obstacles, we could always be them.

I hope that someday my children will have as much fun sledding as I did when I was growing up.  My daughter is already beginning to show interest in the activity, but right now she lacks a certain disregard for her own safety.  We have a gentle slope in our backyard that she practices on from time to time, and she seems to enjoy it and is starting to seek greater thrills while on the slopes.  Despite his young age, my son already appears to have a taste for adventure.  So I imagine in a few years I will be trying to pull him back from the brink of self-injury rather than egg him on as I do with my daughter.  Either way, my days of downhill glory may be behind me, but I can still pass on some tips and tricks to my little ones.

Just don't tell their mother.