Teething Bites

There is nothing worse than having a sick baby. When Xander is sick I feel his pain inside my bones. When he awakens in pain in the middle of the night and the only thing he wants is Mama all night long I happily sacrifice my sleep to give him what he needs. Am I exhausted the next day? Hell yes! Am I a little moody and mean to my poor hubby at 6am after I've gotten two hours sleep? Um, yeah. Do I get over my exhaustion by the time I've brushed my teeth and had a cup of coffee. Of course!

Xander is a pretty good sleeper unless he's teething and/or sick. Last night he was attached to me all night long after waking every hour  and refused to sleep in his crib. He needed to sleep upright on my chest. I slept in the glider chair with him from 10pm-5am, when he awoke for the day. My sweet, sick boy.

Poor guy has the unfortunate luck to be teething AND sick right now. It's never been so bad. We canceled all our plans for the weekend. I can't go anywhere. My baby needs me. When my baby has a cold he becomes a snot machine. The snot pours out of his nose like a water faucet. And it's Mommy and Daddy's job to suck it out. So we live in the shower with the steam and with the Nose Frida snot sucker close by. The humidifier runs with Vick's pads constantly. Advil is our friend.

He reverts to comfort nursing all day and night, like a newborn. Yes, my nipples get a little sore but such is life. My baby is in pain so I can deal with some pain on my end in order to ease his suffering a bit. Anything for my angel. Comfort nursing is one of the greatest gifts of nursing your baby. It's an instant way to soothe them. Bang on the head; pop them on the boob. Hungry; pop them on the boob. Teething pains; pop them on the boob. Can't sleep; pop them on the boob. Woke up too early from a nap fussing; pop them on the boob. Anyhow, I digress. I could talk about the miracle of boobs all day long...

Teething bites. No pun intended. It has been a long road in a few short months from zero to eight teeth. Xander is getting his eighth tooth at 11.5 months; it's his first molar. He got his first bottom tooth at 7.5 months. We have experienced countless sleepless nights and all night nurse-a-thons, homeopathic remedies, boxes of Camilia, bottles of Hyland's & Advil, cold teethers, frozen pacifiers and of course, bitten nipples. I miss his adorable baby gummy smile terribly. But his beautiful little teeth are markers of his transition into toddlerhood and are a perfect example of how every transition & every change, good, bad, easy or hard that our babies go through is a time to relish simply because these changes and transitions come and go so quickly. We are mothers. We are warders of pain. It's just what we do.