No-one ever warned me how hard this would be. How hard it is to watch my little girl suffer. A baby girl who normally shrieks with laughter when she sees me who now shrieks with pain instead. No-one told me how much it would hurt me to see her pain. I'm struggling.
As you know, I'm normally so mellow about these things. Many of the challenges of parenthood I have taken in my stride but this, I'm not sure I can bear it much longer. When I am at work, struggling to keep my eyes open after a disturbed night, the only way that I can work through the exhaustion is by reminding myself that I still have months, perhaps years (as I was reminded by Baby Genie this weekend), of this ahead of me therefore I have to stay strong – for Lara (and for my job!)
I honestly think that trying to respond to Lara's teething pain has been the part of motherhood for which I have been least prepared. After the first tooth (accompanied by the first cold), I could recognise the pattern... Lara would scream in the middle of the night, often without waking. The skin around her nappy would look a little red (although we haven't had any big problems with rashes or anything). Her cheeks would burn red all day and she would scratch the back of her head, just behind her ears.
Lara now has 5 teeth and all but one of them has brought with it a cold. Right now, she has her side teeth coming through; she has a cold which is making her cough up catarrh; she has totally gone of her food (I think this is just to spite me for having posted about how good she is with food last week) - I have never seen her so miserable. All day we have to struggle to elicit a smile from her. On Saturday she was so ill and so much in pain that in a Calpol-ed stupor she chose to spend the whole day sitting curled up in the crook of my arm, or that of Mr B. on the sofa watching Cbeebies. She looked so sad, so resigned to the pain, so exhausted, so un-Lara-like it was soul-destroying to see. We've tried everything we can to relieve the pain – Teething granules, gel, soothers, cold raw vegetables, teething rings... but nothing seems to work as well as a good munch on her own fist (or my finger). I don't know what else to try. The teeth are coming (I know by the quantities of dribble) I just wish they would hurry up so that I can have my bubbly, giggly, smiley, cheeky Lara back.
As you know, I'm normally so mellow about these things. Many of the challenges of parenthood I have taken in my stride but this, I'm not sure I can bear it much longer. When I am at work, struggling to keep my eyes open after a disturbed night, the only way that I can work through the exhaustion is by reminding myself that I still have months, perhaps years (as I was reminded by Baby Genie this weekend), of this ahead of me therefore I have to stay strong – for Lara (and for my job!)
I honestly think that trying to respond to Lara's teething pain has been the part of motherhood for which I have been least prepared. After the first tooth (accompanied by the first cold), I could recognise the pattern... Lara would scream in the middle of the night, often without waking. The skin around her nappy would look a little red (although we haven't had any big problems with rashes or anything). Her cheeks would burn red all day and she would scratch the back of her head, just behind her ears.
Lara now has 5 teeth and all but one of them has brought with it a cold. Right now, she has her side teeth coming through; she has a cold which is making her cough up catarrh; she has totally gone of her food (I think this is just to spite me for having posted about how good she is with food last week) - I have never seen her so miserable. All day we have to struggle to elicit a smile from her. On Saturday she was so ill and so much in pain that in a Calpol-ed stupor she chose to spend the whole day sitting curled up in the crook of my arm, or that of Mr B. on the sofa watching Cbeebies. She looked so sad, so resigned to the pain, so exhausted, so un-Lara-like it was soul-destroying to see. We've tried everything we can to relieve the pain – Teething granules, gel, soothers, cold raw vegetables, teething rings... but nothing seems to work as well as a good munch on her own fist (or my finger). I don't know what else to try. The teeth are coming (I know by the quantities of dribble) I just wish they would hurry up so that I can have my bubbly, giggly, smiley, cheeky Lara back.
