In which I moan about teething, and lack of sleep. Again.

Two years ago, the inside of my upper gum begun to ache. Then the molar begun to throb, became sensitive to hot and cold, and the entire right side of my face was sore for days.

I cursed my chocolate raisin addiction, my hand cooked crisp addition, my popcorn addiction. As I lay awake at night with my face on fire, I shook my fist (metaphorically of course) at my utter bad luck at falling into the shallow end of the great teeth gene pool of my family and taking after my dad instead of my mum.

Each time I probed the gum, tentatively, with my tongue. And oh, so tentatively because it bloody well hurt like hell, I wondered was it tooth ache? Was it an abscess (I’ve never had one so I had no idea what to expect), perhaps a dying tooth? What? What was wrong?

I’m not great at taking painkillers (long, long, story) and I was pregnant, so I suffered through this for a few weeks. Then overnight, a tiny little sliver of tooth popped out of my gum.

Fucking wisdom teeth.

The relief that I wouldn’t need a dentist.

The horror and the pain of new teeth growing.

Yeah, now I can look back and say I do not look forward to the other wisdom tooth coming out because it. Was. Awful.

So I get what my poor little baby is going through.

Elle is teething. It’s her last molars, and it is driving us both insane.

She’s not as enthusiastic with her eating. She pushes her food around the plate, craves colder foods and then only nibbles at them. She’s clingy, running to me the second I’m in the door, and wailing when I say “just one second, let me get my shoes and coat off.”

She’s breastfeeding through the night like a newborn, waking every hour for half an hour, sitting up in bed, and she loves pushing the heels of her feet into my stomach stretching out her body, with her back arched. This last is especially lovely while nursing at two am in the morning – not!

Most days, I am beyond exhaustion.

I am surviving on copious amounts of coffee and comforting my sleep deprived self with chocolate and biscuits, which isn’t great for the aforementioned teeth, nor the dietary needs of an adult human being. I am falling asleep on the bus, though I’ve only missed my stop once on the way home, I live in constant amusement that I’ll wake up at the final stop with the bus driver shaking me awake, drool running down my chin and headphones askew. It shall be “tots hilar”.

But, but, but.

All this is nothing to the pain my poor baby feels. Growing teeth hurts. And that we don’t remember the first time we have to grow an entire mouth of teeth, is a small mercy.

I just want this period of her life to be over. For both our sakes.

 

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