Pearly white bastards

Wow. Teething sucks.

One minute they go to sleep all pink gums and toothless grins, looking like a 98 year old man who lost his dentures, and the next minute it's 5:23 in the morning and they're screaming like someone is poking their eyes with rusty nails because the first evil tooth has decided to pierce the gum line.

Except it's not quite that fast.

First comes the drool. Apparently, sometimes for a month or more, they drool excessively, and this is an early sign that a tooth, that pearly white bastard, is packing its bags and headed for the border. In the last 6 weeks I have had my fingers, shoulders, arms, pants, t-shirts and face all covered, at various points, with clear, drooly goo. He managed to soak the front of his jammies one morning so thoroughly that I had to change the fleece jammies, and the onesie underneath, AND wipe off his little chest. It drips in slow motion out of the corner of his mouth and drops like a slime mold off the edge of his little pink bottom lip. It's disgusting in a cute kind of way...

Then comes the vomit and the diarrhea. He didn't have too much of that this time, but in the 48 hours preceding his first tooth's first look at the world, he did have both unpleasant experiences. A few times. And it was heartbreaking. Especially when he threw up and had a massive poop at the same time on the couch. He looked so pitiful, puke coming out his nose and the nauseating stench of liquid poo surrounding him like a fog.

After droolfest, and the vomit/poop sessions, comes the screaming. Everything is fine, peaceful even. He is cooing at a toy hanging in front of him while he sits in his bouncy chair and mommy makes some lunch. He is babbling, talking to himself or to someone else, it's hard to tell. His little arms are wiggling in happy motions, and he's fine. All is right with the world. And then, in the time it takes you to put the mustard back in the fridge, he's screeching like a dying condor and as far as you can tell, not a damn thing has changed! Nothing has fallen on his head, he hasn't wedged an appendage in between two sharp objects, he isn't stuck under something. He's just hysterical, inconsolable, and you're beginning to feel the same way.

A word of advice: stick a finger in his mouth. I discovered that this not only soothes him by giving him something warm and fleshy to nom on, but gives you a chance to feel his little gums and inspect for the telltale ridge of a tooth starting its nasty little excavation. I did this, and found one such mean spirited jackass attacking his mouth, and while the finding of it did nothing to relieve his pain at its presence, it did tell me that some baby Orajel and a dose of Tylenol would!