Teething and Other Tales of Terror

A wise woman will recognize the blessing in the dirty work.

Max is getting teeth right now. A lot of them. He also has a cold and is refusing to eat food, which means I'm nursing my one year old like I did when he was one month old - except now, as I mentioned, he has lots of teeth, which he likes to practice using. Besides the biting, the other side effect of increased nursing is more nighttime wake-ups. Why is it so much harder to wake up once a night now than it was every couple hours with an infant? Can I please get an injection for whatever hormone made me deliriously giddy for the first six weeks of motherhood?

This morning Max was melting down. That term really is accurate for him. He throws his body up and back, arches, and then goes completely limp. The few times I haven't been there to catch him, he lands on the floor in a melted puddle, typically taking the impact with his head. More often, I'm holding him and his head impacts some part of my face (nose, jaw, cheek) instead of the floor. That was the case this morning. It was 6 am and after 5 hours of interrupted sleep, I'm sitting on the floor in a shirt that was doubling as a snot rag with yesterday's mascara smeared under my eyes, holding a toddler who is thrashing like a crazy man in a straight jacket and bobbing my head to avoid a skull to the nose.

In the midst of this pleasant tableau, I had a thought. What if I wasn't here right now? What if I wasn't the one holding Max while he had a tantrum about how tired he was, how much his gums hurts, and how frustrating it is to have salty goo run out of your nose all day? And I realized that I was grateful to be the one doing the hard, dirty work that mothering is day-in and day-out.

I'll have to remind myself of that next time the little vampire strikes.