Wednesday, May 05, 2004
Potential new parents, allow me to share some rather upsetting news with you. Sometime after babies begin sleeping through the night on a consistent basis, and you've become blissfully reacquainted with the concept of getting A Full Night's Sleep (TM), there's this thing that kids do that is called "teething". Perhaps you've heard of it? It usually begins to happen around six months of age, and continues to occur randomly until the kid reaches two and a half years and 20 baby teeth. That's approximately two years of teething. Twenty-four months.
To put it bluntly, teething sucks, my friends. It sucks for the baby, and it sucks for the parents. OH, how it sucks for the parents!
Your average baby begins the teething process with two of those adorable little bottom teeth. They're sharp and they hurt coming in and sometimes there's puddles of drool and sleeplessness and inconsolable crying and fevers and a runny nose, which, if you're really lucky, can turn into infected congestion in the ears. This happens repeatedly as the kid sprouts fangs on top and a few more tiny teeth flanking either side of the original top and bottom teeth. At some point during all of this, you will get the bright idea to stick your finger in the kid's mouth, which will of course result in your finger getting bitten. If YOUR gums were suddenly serrated, and they hurt like hell, AND your parents kept adding insult to injury by poking around inside your mouth, wouldn't YOU want to bite somebody?
Then one day the drooling dries up and you gaze upon your spawn's new teeth with pure parental pride and take pictures of the kid just so you can show everyone the new teeth. Those teeth cost you some precious hours of sleep and very nearly your sanity too, so BY GAWD, everyone damn well better appreciate THE TEETH! You heave a sigh of relief, remove the waterproof clothing from the baby and resume your uninterrupted sleep schedule. The teething experience begins to fade from memory.
Enter the molars.
It's not demonic possession, it's just a new depth to the horrors of teething. Each one of these molar things has four - FOUR! - sharp prongs. For added fun, they erupt in pairs---one tooth on each side of the jaw! Here's where you learn what inconsolable crying REALLY is.
Sophie teethed late to begin with: she cut her first tooth at 10 months. Now she's teething out of order with molars erupting before all of the incisors have come in. (I think it's only two molars on the bottom, but yesterday I tried to check her upper gums and ending up having my finger chomped, so screw that.) The molar teething experience is so bad that it's setting the bar for all other child rearing "war stories". For about the past three nights, the poor kid has woken up shrieking in pain several times a night between 11:30 PM and 4 AM. Each time, we'd rush in, haul her out of her crib and try to rock/walk/feed her, with limited success. After a while, she'd just give up on us and indicate that she wanted to go back to her crib. (Sorry, kiddo, we're new at this, and it's all on-the-job training!) Neither Sean nor I are at the top of our game when roused from a deep slumber, so it was just last night that we realized that, hey, maybe giving her some baby Tylenol would help matters! It did, but it was already 4 AM by that point and morning comes around 7 AM at Cheezwerks HQ.
Today, morning hurt for all involved. When I went in to wake Sophie up - at the latest possible minute, I might add - she protested with something that sounded like a pterodactyl scream. Believe me, the feeling is mutual. I'm realizing now that if this teething boo-hockey goes on for much longer, there's not enough caffeine in the world to keep me on my feet and functioning.
# posted by Amanda at 11:32 AM |
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