Teeth!

There's BIG news today: Nina has now got all of her baby teeth! Every single one! (At least, she's got the 19 that we expect her to get; she only appears to have 3 of 4 lower incisors but the dentist said that some kids just don't get exactly all of them. But that's not the news.) The news is that the second set of molars has come through over the past 10 days, and the upper right one has just come through today.

I can't believe it. No more being up at night with a screaming child, wondering if it's teeth. Now it's sure to be something else! And hopefully, with one less cause, screaming will be correspondingly less frequent. We've had a couple of great nights lately, as a matter of fact. No more Nina refusing to eat because her mouth hurts, only to wake up screaming for milk at 3am. No more Nina INSISTING on sleeping with her face ON my face. Not next to, not nearby, not in the same bed, not in a cuddle, she meant ON TOP of my FACE. That was the first set of molars. She hasn't been breastfeeding since 14 or 15 months when one particular week she just stopped. But when she was, teeth were often ushered in by one or more of those nights. Those nights when every 40 minutes or so there'd be crying, then suckling. Then a bit more dozing, then crying, then suckling. This prompted me to walk around for 2 weeks humming 

'when you wake up in the morning, and it's quarter to 1, and you just want to have a little bit of fun, you .... 



.... suck the nip! suckle suckle, suckle suckle suck suck. 
And when you wake up in the morning and it's quarter to 2, and you feel like you know what you should do: you suck the nip, suckle suckle, suckle suckle suck suck. 
And when you wake up in the morning and it's quarter to 3, and you realize that you're a little hungry: you suck the nip, suckle suckle, suckle suckle suck suck.
And when you wake up in the morning and it's quarter to 4, and you think to yourself: "HEY! I want some MORE": you suck the nip, suckle suckle, suckle suckle suck suck.


My point is that teething made us all a little off. I remember when Barbara, our health visitor, solved the problem of Nina not eating. She hadn't eaten "solids" (this was at about 7 or 8 months, I think, back when babies "eat" "solids", rather than eating solids, as it were) for days. Barbara suggested giving Nina teetha (this herbal powder stuff) about 10 minutes before meals, and it totally worked. We had to give it to Hannah for Nina during the day, along with orajel, which we had to import, and calpol (baby tylenol).


I also remember telling myself, and a number of other people, that we couldn't have a second child until these teeth were through. All of them. Because I just couldn't take it. And now they are done! And I DO want another child. I want one soon. 


In the meantime, I bought a bottle of bubbly and we had a romantic late dinner reminiscing about all those teeth, and wondering whether parents of children who have teething pain have less children than other parents, and if so, how long it will be until teething problems have been virtually elimated from the human genome. Ages, no doubt. And we'll have more children if we can, anyway.