Teething hell

I write to you from the depths of teething hell. Yes, we did start this discourse a good while ago...maybe even two months ago. But, as you may or may not recall, pre-teething is an amorphous designation that may suspend you in some weird form of "waiting for it all to end" misery for an unspecified period of time (some would say it lasts years while all the baby teeth come in, and is punctuated by weeks of no symptoms). G had all the classic symptoms in April-drooling, fussiness, low grade fever, chewing on anything and everything, where pressure on the gums was tremendously helpful. Our non-regular doctor even said, spying her little tooth buds under her gums, "they'll be in in a week or two, I'd say" (our regular doctor was called out to deliver a baby, but G may well of tricked him just as well). Well, they're not in. And the symptoms, which were hot and heavy for a week or so, vanished into thin air by mid-April.

Now, the symptoms are back. This week has been rough for all of us. G has been whining...and I don't mean just whining, I mean WHINING (from dawn till dusk, absolutely nonstop except when she's distracted enough to squeal or laugh, which isn't often enough, in our opinion). Sleep even seems to be a bit disrupted for our Homer-Simpson-like sleeper...she is waking up about 2 hours earlier than usual to eat. Clearly, this is not convenient for me, because I am the one who feeds her and I am the one that has to get up for work at 5. It would be nice if she was waking up at 5 too, like the good old days, because I really never go back to sleep after I get up to feed her (unless it's a weekend day), particularly with the "at-breast-lolly-gagging",which unfortunately has become the norm. And she is falling back to sleep while nursing less and less and staying up to coo and squeal more.

So, even with Tylenol, gum rubbing, frozen washcloth, cold teething toys, even with all of these she is uncomfortable and generally miserable. I am a bit concerned because her Grandaddy's family (Papa side) all get and lose their baby teeth freakishly late (I mean, like losing baby teeth into their 30s and 40s). All I can hope for is that she actually cuts some teeth soon to make all this feel worth it. For her and for us...

That's not to say it's all gloom and doom. She definitely still has her moments, teething or none. For example, she has started dancing: