My son has been fussy lately and my wife and I have been wondering why. We fear that his teeth are coming in and we fear that these teeth will turn our little baby into a terrible monster ready to eat anything in sight, turning his gentle defecations into unbearable mountains of filth requiring gas masks and special gloves simply to handle the thin, disposable diapers keeping the dangerous contents from harming our sensitive skin. Perhaps we’re overreacting, a little. Somehow, though, these changes will come sooner or later and our little baby will grow up, even more than he already has.
Our son has been sick this week and his congestion of nose and chest is anything but pleasant. We have truly been thinking that his teeth are coming in though. Perhaps it is a first-time-parent-paranoia but we’ve been checking for teeth since the first couple weeks after he was born. He’s taken to standing up in our laps while supporting himself by holding onto our thumbs. Sometimes he’ll squawk and pull our fingers directly into his mouth in what resembles large monsters eating buildings more than a child with a toothache. He’s been chewing on our thumbs, knuckles, and fingers. In addition, he chews on pacifiers rather than sucking on them. All of this led us to believe that he was getting some teeth.
We still don’t see any teeth, but that hasn’t stopped us as eager parents. We’ve given him access to rigid plastic toys filled with chilled liquid, the end of a recently cleaned carrot (directly from the fridge), and even let him chew on our fingers for extended periods of time. The fact that this calmed him led to our certainty that his teeth were coming in. Any other experienced parents want to share some personal experiences concerning teething? It would be really helpful to know what the signs of teething actually are and what, if anything, we can do about helping our son through his next transition out of babyhood. For now… we’ll keep letting him eat our fingers.