Teething Hell

One of the advantages of talking to other moms who have babies around the same age as Judith (her actual age, that is) is hearing about all of the milestones/other things they go through with their little ones - it gives me some perspective for what we will be in for in the coming months.  When so many of my friends talked about how bad the 1 year molars are, I kind of blew it off and thought, "Well, it can't be any worse than the rest of the teeth!"  I know we've been lucky so far, and Judith is a pretty good teether - minor fussiness, generally good eating habits, no major runny noses, etc.

Holy crap, how naive could I be?!  The last week has been a teething nightmare.  Judith's been working on these molars for 6 months.  6 MONTHS!  She's been worse than a beaver, chewing on everything she could get her hands on.  Sunday she was a little fussy, but nothing too serious.  Monday she was a complete bear.  I thought it was the heat until I decided to risk losing my finger and felt her gums.  Success!  She finally cut her first molar!  I realized then that her fussiness was due to that elusive molar making it's appearance in the lineup of her teeth.  A further investigation discovered that 2 more molars should be making an appearance very soon, as there were 2 very hard, pointy knots on her lower gum line, 1 on each side.

4 days later, and we're still waiting for something to happen.  It can't happen soon enough - last night she refused to go to sleep until 10, and that was only after allowing the tylenol to kick in (I generally don't give her anything for her teething pain, as I don't want her body to get too adjusted to it, but she was so miserable that I figured, "What the hell, it's not going to hurt anything!").  Her teeth have always emerged in sets of 2 or 3, so I'm not surprised that these particular teeth are queuing up.  But these suckers are so hard to come through, and I know she's miserable and cranky because of it.

I really want my happy, pleasant toddler back.