My Son Is Back!

#3 has been teething for what seems like a LONG time. He maintained his cheerful disposition still (he has never been a screaming mad baby) but he was grumpy a lot of the time and whined more than he used to do. The amount of drugs we gave him was sufficient to keep him from crying constantly but the dosing tables are pretty conservative. My guess is, the front of his face was a dull throb when he was medicated and seriously hurting when he was not.

Yesterday the fourth front tooth finally broke through and the swelling started to go down. His mouth probably went from straight painful to a dull ache, if that, and he was able to eat as much as he wanted. He ate about what he normally would in at least two meals over the last few weeks. Then he ate some more. Then he had a full tummy, for the first time in a long time.

You would have thought he was on happy pills last night. The amount of smiling and playing he did was several days' worth, all in a couple of hours. That is the way he was most of the time, before he started teething.

It's good to have him back.

He is obviously going to push another 20+ teeth soon, but none of them is at the very front of his mouth. The nerves for your jaws, as I understand it, are four. One for each side, upper and lower. That's why a sore tooth makes the whole jaw hurt. A sore upper tooth makes the side of your face hurt. An emerging tooth at the top/front of the mouth causes inflammation on both sides of the jaw, meaning probably both sides of the jaw are quite painful, and they make the entire face hurt as well. You won't want to eat because it hurts, so you will always be hungry. When the pain from an empty stomach overwhelms the pain from a sore face, you eat. Lather, rinse, repeat, until your teeth finally pop out. When the rest of the teeth come in, they won't all make both sides of the face hurt. It is to be hoped, that means the boy will have a less-painful time of it. We'll see.