Teething - The party that never ends

As I've mentioned here and here, The Chubs has been in a major funk for the last few weeks. Eating very little, sleeping very little and just generally being a fussy little muffin. We've had a few evenings of inconsolable crying, many days of 15 min. naps, and so much nipple biting I'm having sympathy pains for the bottle.

Last week I decided, that was enough; we needed to visit her pediatrician and get the low down on this situation. Everything looked great. She appeared healthy. No fever, or any other signs of anything viral or infectious. The conclusion was drawn that she is teething. I've heard that babies can teeth for months without even a tooth showing up. I have a feeling this is what we've been dealing with. It's apparent she is in some sort of discomfort and all signs point to her mouth as the culprit. Especially when she fusses during the middle of a feeding and chomps down multiple times on the nipple. On further inspection, it does appear that one of her bottom front teeth is trying to make it's appearance. Her gums are slightly raised and whiter on one side. She loves it when we rub her gums and sometimes this helps her to finish a feeding without screaming bloody murder.

And I admit, I drugged my child last night. I gave her a tiny dose of Tylenol to ease the pain. And you know what? She slept beautifully for her final nap and was a completely different baby before bedtime. All happy, and smiley and an all-around attention hog. She was like "Hey, look at me dad! Watch me roll over, and grab this ring, and giggle when you play with me. Aren't I the cutest most angelic thing alive?" And of course he bought it, because how couldn't you? She was an absolute joy to be around. So the moral of this story is not that I need to drug my child on a regular basis to keep her happy, but that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and this is just a phase. A phase that could possibly go on for months, but hopefully with a few pleasant breaks along the way. And maybe that lazy tooth will just come in already and get all of this agony over with. I've heard the first is the worst. Anyway, while we're partying it up over here in teething land, help yourself to some delicious cold wash cloths and some frozen paci's, because it may be a long time before this party ends.

Has my child slept today?

Hmmm. not sure. The last confirmed sleepage occured at 4:30am promptly following awakage at 4:45am. The rest, I'm kind of hazy on the details. I fed the Chub Muffin at 5am, then put her down. Knowing she had a full tummy, a clean diaper and was safe in her crib, I crashed. Before I went back to bed however, I checked the monitor and she was awake. An hour later when the Hubs' alarm went off I glanced at the monitor. She was awake. I slept a bit longer thinking it would be ridiculous for her to be awake so soon to eat since I had JUST fed her not long ago, but when 7am rolled around and I looked at the monitor again... AWAKE! I stumbled out of bed like a drunk woman on 16th street and made my way for my pump horns. My lovely husband got up and went to feed The Chubs (bless his heart).

After staying up with her for play time and putting her down again, I promptly made my way for the bed, looked at the monitor. She was awake. Fell asleep into one of those really deep sleeps where you are trying to shake yourself out of it so you can do something and you start dreaming you're actually moving parts of your body to accomplish your task but when you fully wake up you realize you haven't even budged. When I finally snapped out of it enough to actually move my arm toward the monitor, I looked at it. She was awake. Looked at the clock realizing it was ridiculously early for her to be up from her nap, so I turned up the volume, turned over and fell asleep again. The rest of the story is basically a repeat of the above paragraph, including me dreaming about checking the monitor a hundred times and then finally waking up enough to do it in real life. Each time I checked she was awake - all the way up until her next feeding time which I then stumbled out of bed (drunken style) and made my way to her room. The entire time I fed her, she rubbed her eyes over and over and over again until I had to check to make sure they were still in their sockets. She also kept pushing the bottle away and biting on the nipple. All signs point to this not being a hunger issue considering she's still not eating that great. So now I'm wondering... constipation from the new vitamins we're giving her, or teething? I think I've taken her temperature a million times in the last few days just to be sure and it's always a perfectly normal 98.4ish. So I think we've pretty much ruled out illness, but I suppose that could still be a possibility.

I think we need to trade places. She can stay up all hours of the night (and day) and put me down for naps. I wouldn't complain. 3 naps a day, 12 hours of sleep at night. Sounds amazing.