My own personal hallucinogen

In my mostly-pretty-square life, I have never tried LSD or crystal meth or any other hardcore hallucinogenic drug. (There you go, mom and dad; rest easy.) And after a day like yesterday, when I was convinced at times that I was seeing things, that's a good thing.

Our morning (pictured above) proceeded as it normally does, and only started going downhill around lunchtime. Liam started to get crabby, I had trouble getting him to eat, and then, right after lunch, I was holding him when I sneezed, and he burst into tears and did not stop wailing for at least 20 minutes. OK - even I can figure out that something out of the ordinary is up when this happens. Faced with playgroup starting in less than an hour, I decided to give him a dose of Baby Orajel. This is a decision not to be made lightly, as there are only 4 doses permitted per day; was I going to regret that 1 p.m. dose by 3 a.m. when I had a wailing baby on my hands and had used up my entire daily quota???

The Orajel seemed to help immediately, and since he had calmed down, we went to playgroup. But we had only been there for half an hour when his cheeks started to flame and he started to wail again, and nothing would help - not toys, not his friends, not me holding him. We left playgroup early, and he fell asleep in the car on the way home, then went down for a nap in his crib.


He woke up after just a short nap, and the metamorphosis was complete: he was a monster. He woke up screaming, refused to eat, and nothing I did could stop the waterworks. For the next hour, he had tears streaming from his eyes and snot dripping from his nose. (I took the photo below while holding him; since he was already pitching a fit, I figured taking a picture couldn't possibly upset him any more). At this point during my by-now-hourly gum swipes, I discovered what I had been looking for all this time: a huge white lump under his gum. I thought it was going to crack the surface any moment. I called Chad at work, and asked him to pick up some reinforcements on his way home from work, since the teething rings we had been giving Liam up to this point just didn't seem to be cutting it.

Chad was home half an hour later and I'm telling you, the minute he walked in the door, Liam turned into the happiest baby on the block. This often happens - he is cranky with me and then perks up when daddy comes home - so I tried to pull back his lip to show Chad the tooth under his gum, and prove that I was not just making this tale of misery up. In a freaky turn of events, the lump was gone. This is where I would normally have been sure that someone had slipped something into my drink, but a friend at playgroup was just telling me that day that the baby teeth can move up and down several times before they actually erupt from the gum. I thought that sounded like a kooky old wives' tale, but Chad said he heard the same thing at work yesterday, too. And I guess Liam is now living proof that it can happen. Provided, of course, that I am not just loopy and seeing things after oh-so-much drama.

The good news in all of this is that I can honestly say that he is teething now (and hopefully have you believe me), and since (I think) I have seen the proof with my own eyes, I am hoping that the day is soon. The bad news is that the books all say that this tooth might sit just below his gum for the next month before it pops out, and if that happens I will surely go mad. Even assuming that this tooth appears soon, I still have the next one to worry about. My book says that after the first tooth, babies normally calm down and learn to live with the sensation of teething. However, Liam does not behave normally in a lot of ways, so I shudder to think of what the next year might be like. Maybe I will be needing some chemical assistance after all.