1 Mother 2 Another

At least, these facts were unknown to me.

Yep, it seems it’s that time now, though truth be told, I feel as if she’s been teething for about three months already.  She’s been gnawing on shoulders and drooling down burp cloths since she was around 12 weeks old; she’s had a drool rash around her mouth on and off now for about two months.  She’s well acquainted with her teething fishie and hand, and believe me, it’s best to have more than one since 1) fishie is a different texture from the hand, and you never know which one she’ll want, and 2) you’ll always have one that’s cold.  Fishie is great because it's got a couple different textures, including a really hard edge when she's in the mood to get out some anger, and hand is the place to go when she needs to get the back teeth: she can fit those long fingers in her mouth and be content.  If you’re holding her while she’s gnawing on either of those, it’s best to be sitting on a drop cloth to catch all the excess drool.  But she’s been doing this for so long now, along with the chomping on her fist and trying to bite off your finger at a knuckle, that we’ve come to view it as a way of life.

Recently, though, it’s been amped up a bit.  For the past three days, Maddie’s had a stuffy nose.  At first I thought she was getting her first cold and I cringed at the thought of the ensuing misery.  But she exhibited no other symptoms: no runniness, no coughing, no low fever, no abject misery.  She’s been a little more clingy, a teeny bit more fractious, but nothing that says, “I’m sick!”  I’ve been flushing her nose with baby saline drops (that’s just fun in a bottle) and it seems to help.  No worse, but only a little better.  I mentioned it to my girlfriend Abby today, who told me congestion is a side effect of teething!  No idea why, but it seems that’s what’s going on.

And one more symptom I didn’t know about – a sore hiney.  I noticed yesterday Madeleine was getting a pretty good diaper rash, in a tight red ring.  It’s so much worse today that I started worrying it was a food allergy – I recently introduced pears to her diet.  But I was telling my friend Ray about the congestion being a side effect, and he said, “I didn’t know that!  The only one I knew about was the sore butt.”  Seems an inflamed hinder comes from all the chomping she does during teething; the chewing and saliva makes the stomach think she’s going to eat, the stomach churns up acid, and there you go – tender tushie.  Fortunately for us, we’re going for her six-month checkup tomorrow (I think I’ll start drinking now to get ready) so we can check that there’s nothing else going on, but I feel better knowing these weird things popping up have an explanation.

Now if the #$&%  tooth would just come already!