A Sense Of Relief

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I’m a fairly calm parent.  I don’t freak out over too much, and I just let things happen the way they will.  Still I have my moments.  One of them was over Nick’s teeth.

Nick started teething early in life although I didn’t know that right away.  By three months he was drooling a lot and I actually had a lot of people ask me if he was teething.  He showed teething signs for many months before any teeth actually came in.  The first tooth broke through the day he turned five months and the second one came in two days later.  Then he didn’t have any teething signs for a month.

Around six months Nick started drooling again, and I thought he’d teeth for about two months and his next two teeth would come out around eight months.  That would seem right because the average baby gets his first set of teeth at six months and usually the second set comes in at nine months, so Nick would just continue to be a month ahead of the game.  For weeks every time Nick got crazy fussy I was sure he was having teething problems.  It got to the point that I think Jason was going to loose it if I said one more time that Nick was upset because he was teething.  Then Nick got really sick with his sinus infection.  After that the idea of Nick teething sort of fell off our radar.

Then Nick was finally better and I started thinking of his teeth again.  Eight months came and went and still there was no sign of any teeth.  We got well into his ninth month and, even though I tried not to, I started to really worry about the fact that he still didn’t have any new teeth.  It had been almost five months since the first two had come through.  I half jokingly told my mom that we needed to watch out because with things taking so long Nick would probably get his next four teeth together.  Oh, if I only knew how right I would be.

Last Monday night Nick was really fussy.  He hadn’t slept well at daycare that day and he had a bit of a runny nose, so we couldn’t decide if he was sick or just really overtired.  He was so upset though that we gave him some ibuprofen and skipped bath time.  Instead we put him in his jammies and then Nick and I cuddled in the glider and watched the new Jake and the Neverland Pirates.  On Tuesday he seemed better so we figured he had been overtired.  At bath time though we found out that it had been his teeth that had likely been the culprit of his terrible fussiness the day before.

Before bath I always swipe Nick’s teeth and gums with a washcloth.  On Tuesday when I was wiping his top gums I felt what I thought was a tooth.  I looked in Nick’s mouth (which he is not a fan of) and sure enough there was a tooth!  Then I saw that both front teeth were coming in.  Jason stepped over to look and saw Nick’s front left tooth and the one next to it.  Then I looked once more and saw that sure enough both front teeth were in, the lateral incisor on the left was in, and the lateral incisor on the right was close to breaking through.  We couldn’t believe that Nick really was getting four teeth at once!  At that point we realized why he had been so fussy the night before.  The poor thing must have been in so much pain.

I felt such a sense of relief when we found those teeth.  I was grateful to know what had been bothering Nick, but I was so happy that he finally had gotten his next teeth.  I know it sounds dramatic, but I was starting to get worried that something was wrong and that they were having trouble coming though.  Five months between teeth just seemed like such a long time.  The bottom lateral incisors should be next, so I guess I’ll start looking for them around fifteen months.