YO MAMA: Great, my baby’s teething, again

OPINION

It was the middle of the night and the baby had woken up screaming. I turned on the light, scooped him into my arms, and, in horror, saw a dribble of blood coming out of his mouth. With a pinky, I lifted up his trembling lip and BOOM there was a tooth the size of the Pyramid of Giza erupting in there.

Great.

He was teething.

Again.

I hated teething. And from about three months to 13 months, it seemed like my son was teething CONSTANTLY. No one warns you about the medieval-era torture that is teething, AKA “cutting teeth.” Or maybe they do and you think “how bad can it be?”

REALLY FREAKING BAD.

Cutting teeth is a truly ghastly process, especially when the victim is a tiny, helpless little human who has never before experienced pain. Welcome to the world, little buddy, now prepare to have 20 daggers driven through your tender gums, slowly, like needles into a pincushion.

Who knew that years before the arrival of the gentle Tooth Fairy, the Axe Murderer of Tender Gums would wreak havoc on all our lives?

The problem with teething is the disruption it causes. Your previously sleeping-through-the-night baby will now be up at odd hours, crying and wanting to be held. They may refuse to eat solids, because chewing hurts. But they will want to nurse all. day. long.

Teething symptoms sound a lot like a Pepto Bismol commercial: Fever, fussiness, crying baby, drooling, face-rash, forget sleeping!

Statistically-speaking, the onset of a teething episode is about 50 per cent more likely right before a planned holiday or the week you return to work.

Teething usually begins around six months (in our case it was three) with the eruption of the incisors, or the upper and lower four front teeth. You will know it is teething time because your baby will leave a snail-trail of drool behind him. It will be difficult to differentiate him from a puppy because he will want to mouth everything in sight, including your face and hands.

Chew toys are essential.

And if you think the incisors are bad just wait till you get to the primary molars. They are bigger, bumpier and seem to take about 15 times longer to erupt. Somewhere, in some distant corner of the Internet I once found myself in (probably after 36 hours of being awake holding my teething infant) I read that after a tooth pokes through, the skin around it can actually grow over, thereby extending the teething process and requiring subsequent “cutting” through the gums. I’m pretty sure this is the kind of torture that awaits us on the other side of the gates to hell.

Once those first molars come in, your baby will probably have a cute, gap-toothed smile, because he’s missing his canines. The process of teething usually circles back to fill in this gap somewhere between 16 to 22 months. Some babies will get their teeth earlier or later, and some will get several at once. The canines, which are long and pointy like elephant tusks, take a long time to come in fully.

Finally,  the canines are in and your little one sports a beautiful, shiny alligator tooth smile. He is beautiful with his perfect, white teeth. You think you are done. Teething is over.

You are wrong. It is now time for…

REVENGE OF THE MOLARS!

Around two-years-old, the last teeth will erupt. That’s right. Teething is a TWO YEAR ORDEAL. The back molars are the biggest and the baddest of them all. You might think you’re a veteran now, with a whole toolbox of teething strategies under your belt. But you have a toddler now, and their rage will be amplified.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that all those baby teeth fall out anyways in a few more years and you get to do it alllllll over again.

— Charlotte Helston gave birth to her first child, a rambunctious little boy, in the spring of 2021. Yo Mama is her weekly reflection on the wild, exhilarating, beautiful, messy, awe-inspiring journey of parenthood.

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