Nobody warns you about teething. Not really. People mention it in passing — "oh, the teething phase is tough" — and you nod and file it away as something you'll deal with when you get there. Then you get there, and you understand why parents talk about it the way survivors talk about things.
My daughter Orla started teething at four months. By five months I was running on four hours of broken sleep a night, she was miserable for stretches of every day, and I had tried approximately everything. Chilled cloths. Amber beads (I know, I know — I was desperate). Three different teethers from the supermarket that she showed zero interest in. A silicone finger brush that she bit so hard it left marks.
Then I found the Nuby Bug a Loop Teether, and things got measurably better. Here's the full story.
Why Nothing Else Was Working
The teethers I'd tried before had one thing in common: they were boring. A single smooth silicone shape, maybe one or two textures, nothing that held Orla's attention for more than thirty seconds. She'd mouth them once, decide they weren't interesting, and drop them. Then she'd go back to chewing her own fist, which was less effective and considerably more soggy.
What I needed was something that would actually keep her engaged — something with enough variety to hold her attention while also doing the job of soothing her gums. I'd been reading about the importance of different textures for teething relief and started looking more specifically for something that offered more than one surface.
Why I Chose the Nuby Bug a Loop
I came across it on ALTOE while searching late one evening, the way you search for things when you're tired and slightly desperate. The description stopped me: multi teething surfaces, different shape beads, reduces discomfort while teething, helps strengthen erupted teeth without harming sensitive gums.
The design made immediate sense. Rather than a single shape, the Bug a Loop is a large loop — like an oversized bracelet — strung with beads of genuinely different shapes and textures. A ladybug bead with raised spots. A butterfly bead with wings that protrude outward, creating a thin edge that's ideal for getting right to where the gum is sore. Smooth beads, ridged beads, beads of different sizes. Every surface does something slightly different.
It's also BPA free, made from silicone, and easily cleaned by wiping — which matters enormously when you're dealing with something that spends most of its time in a baby's mouth. At 59 grams it's light enough for a small baby to hold and manipulate without tiring their hands out. And the loop shape means it's easy to grip from multiple angles, which is important when fine motor skills are still developing.
The bright multicolour design was the final nudge. Orla is at the age where high-contrast, vivid colours genuinely capture her attention. I figured if it looked interesting enough to pick up, we were halfway there.
The First Time She Used It
It arrived two days after I ordered it. I gave it to Orla that afternoon during what had become our daily difficult hour — the stretch between 3pm and 4pm when her gums seemed to bother her most and nothing I did made much difference.
She picked it up immediately. The loop shape made it easy for her to get a grip, and within about thirty seconds she'd found the butterfly bead and was working the wing edge against her lower gum with what I can only describe as focused determination. She stayed engaged with it for nearly twenty minutes. Twenty minutes. The previous record with any teether was about four.
She wasn't completely settled — teething doesn't have a magic off switch — but she was calmer, more occupied, and clearly getting some relief. I sat across from her and felt something I hadn't felt much of that week: like I'd actually helped.
Six Weeks of Daily Use
We're now six weeks in and the Bug a Loop is a fixture of our daily routine. It comes out during the difficult afternoon stretch, during the pre-nap wind-down, and on the changing mat when Orla needs something to focus on. She rotates between the different beads depending on what's bothering her — some days it's the butterfly wings, some days it's the ridged beads, some days she just mouths the whole thing indiscriminately and seems perfectly happy about it.
The silicone has held up well. No tearing, no discolouration, no change in texture. I wipe it down after each use and it cleans easily. The colours are still vivid — no fading despite daily handling and regular cleaning.
Her motor skills have visibly improved over this period too — she's much better at transferring the loop between hands and rotating it to find the bead she wants. I can't attribute that entirely to the teether, but the product description mentions motor skill development and I believe it. Manipulating a loop with multiple differently-shaped beads is genuinely good practice for small hands.
What Changed
The difficult afternoon hour is still difficult sometimes. Teething is teething. But having something that reliably holds Orla's attention and gives her genuine gum relief has changed the texture of those hard stretches. Instead of cycling through options that don't work, I reach for the Bug a Loop and it usually helps. That reliability — knowing there's something in the drawer that actually does the job — is worth more than I can easily explain to someone who hasn't been in the middle of a teething phase.
I'm also sleeping slightly better. Not because the teether works at night — it doesn't, she's not using it in her cot — but because the days are less exhausting when the difficult hours are more manageable. That compounds. A slightly better day leads to a slightly better evening leads to a slightly better night. It's not a cure. It's a meaningful improvement, and right now that's everything.
For Any Parent in the Thick of It
If you're in the teething phase right now and nothing is working, I'd say: try this one. It's not expensive, it's well made, it's safe, and it's genuinely different from the standard single-shape teethers that line the shelves. The variety of surfaces is the thing that makes it work — different parts of the gum need different kinds of relief, and this gives babies the ability to find what works for them.
Orla is seven months old now. We've got more teething ahead of us. I'm not dreading it the way I was at five months. That's the difference one good product can make.
👉 Shop the Nuby Bug a Loop Teether – Multicolour on ALTOE
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Written by Saoirse Gallagher. All opinions are her own.
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