Troublesome Teething!

Oh dear, a teething baby is a little bit tiresome isn’t she? I do believe that I happen to have my very own little teething baby!

It started last week. Emmeline has been drooling everywhere for ages now, and for at least a month or two, she has been putting most things into her mouth and has been using my hands and fingers as her own personal chew toys!

I had wondered if she was starting the process of teething, but I could not really be sure. Then last week, I became sure! Emmeline is generally a happy baby. She cries for food and sleepiness and very little else. We have a ritual whereby every morning I bring her into bed with me normally just after Xavi has gotten out of bed so that we can sleep a little longer. Or if she is having a bad time, I will bring her into bed with me earlier if I need to. Yes, yes, I am sure that there are just a million mothers that are saying “Oh no, you cannot bring the child into the bed with you, bad habits, dangerous, problems with dependency on the mother” etc. But I had Emmeline in the bed with me every night for the first 2.5 months of her little life, and there were never any problems, and the first time I put her in her own crib to sleep alone, she did it without any problem whatsoever, so blah! It worked for us.

So anyway, last Monday Emmeline slept like poo! She was up half the night just complaining in general. After I had fed her and made sure she warm enough, the only thing I could do was just stick my hand through the crib and give her the dummy to try to relax her as I was too goddamned tired to get out of bed and try to rock her to seep. Eventually around 4 am I gave up and bought her into bed with me. So we wake up the next morning, and instead of waking up with my baby who wakes up talking, gurgling, laughing, pulling out my eyes and poking my face; I woke up with a baby who was whinging and crying. Very unusual. She spent most of the day irritable and making a little whinging half cry noise. I felt so bad for her and the only thing that I could really do for her was to have her as close to me as possible, either in my arms, or in the Baby Bjorn. I gave her a little medicine to try to help, and it did seem to soothe her a little bit, but she was still furiously trying to eat anything and everything and I could see her biting down as hard as possible on things without getting too much relief. Her sore gums also meant that she wasn’t eating so well either, she would eat for a little while and then stop and start to cry. It got a little frustrating especially as there was nothing that I could do to make her feel better. This continued for a couple of days and then she appeared to be better. ‘Thank god’ I thought!

Then along came yesterday. She was all whingy again, she has a little tiny rash on her chin and cheeks (I guess from the incredible amount of spit that falls out of her gorgeous little mouth every day), she was sleeping less and she was irritable. I figured that her gums were hurting her but put her to bed without too much of a problem, and soon forgot all about it. Then I went to bed and it all began. Around 23:30, I went in to go sleep as quietly as I could, however, she woke up. So I decided to feed her before going to sleep in the hope of getting a good stretch of between 4 to 6 hrs of (almost) uninterrupted sleep.  So I fed her, burped her, kissed her, put her to bed, told her I loved her, collapsed into my own bed, switched off the light and patiently waited for sleep to come and get me as quick as possible! Then Emmeline started to make little noises and I could hear her pulling out her dummy to eat it and then start to whinge because she didn’t have her dummy in her mouth! How frustrating was that! I put the dummy into her mouth; she takes it out, chews it, drops it and starts to whimper about not having it!

At one point I had my hand through the crib hovering about the dummy and gently swatting her hands away from her mouth to try and stop this pattern. My arm eventually lost all feeling from being up in the air unsupported! So I tried another tactic. I sternly whispered (so as not to wake xavi up) that if Emmeline chose to remove her dummy and dropped it again, she would just have to go without it as I could not spend the whole night putting her dummy back in her mouth. I even turned over so that my back was facing the crib convinced that I would be able to be strong and not jump the minute my daughter made the slightest of sounds. That lasted about 20 seconds! She started to settle and we both dozed for about 5 minutes, but then I woke up with her whimpering and shrieking again. So the dummy process began again. I know, bad mommy for just giving her the dummy the whole time, but I was absolutely exhausted. By around 01:30 I lost a little bit of my patience. All I wanted to do was sleep, I was tired and cold and as I had been awake for so long, unfortunately I started to feel hungry! Don’t worry, losing my patience quite simply entailed whispering loudly “oh what Emmeline? What is it you want? I can’t do anything. I am so tired” whilst trying to get out of bed and open a very stubborn closed eyelid. My only option was to stick a booby in her mouth and hope that it would get her off to sleep. It did thankfully, but not for a long time and not very deeply! I remember waking up several more time and then we managed to get a few good hours of sleep. Then in the early hours we woke up again and eventually around 06:00am she came into bed with me.

All the while that this was happening, poor little Yaincoa was in his room coughing the night away. He still has a cough (I could hazard a few guesses as to why and it has everything to do with the wicked witch), so I think I also couldn’t sleep for that.

Emmeline managed to get a little more sleep thankfully! She started the day off and seemed fine, but eventually around midday I had to give her some medicine as she seems to be more and more uncomfortable as the day has progressed.

Eventually I had to bath her and out her to bed early as I think the best thing for her is to sleep. She woke up an hour later crying and I have just given her a little more medicine so that the poor little thing can try to get some rest! I do hope my little noodle gets good nights sleep and selfishly, I also hope that I do as well!!