This gif is precisely how I feel after my kid wakes up at 9:30 pm, 12 am, and 3 am to scream bloody murder for an hour each time. Although we’ve narrowed the possible causes to a bad case of reflux or teething syndrome, it definitely seems to be more the latter, given the related symptoms going on.
At no point did any book, parent or any other resource tell me that teething was going to be this bad. Teething is absolutely the worst thing that’s happened throughout my foray into parenthood, and there aren’t many ways to describe how much I’ve grown to hate the misery it puts me, mythical wife, and our child.
If teething were a person, and you locked me in a room with it, the baked potato and Adolf Hitler, and then gave me a gun with two bullets, I’d shoot teething twice. I’d rank teething higher than coronavirus and Atlanta morning radio, as in things that absolutely suck. I would rather have an entire week of one-on-two you-suck-at-your-job meetings than a single night of the hell that teething put me through the night prior.
Seriously, I could go on, but there aren’t enough words to express just how much I hate teething now. Obviously it’s of no fault of my precious kid herself, but damn does it chap my ass to how much things are sucking, and having no expectation or warning that teething was going to be this bad.
There is no more feeling of being helpless and defeated than your kid wailing in agony at their little infant teef, drilling and boring upward to try and be out in the world, and us as parents who have little to no ability to do anything about it. We’ve tried teething rings and other little aides, and as much as I don’t want to have to, we even tried infant Tylenol to try and dull the pain, but nothing seems to be working other than snuggling her until she tires herself out back to sleep, which usually takes anywhere from 45-60 minutes, which at 3 in the morning is about as appealing as getting on I-75 the morning when the baked potato is in town.
And this has been going on, off-and-on over the last few days, which now that both mythical wife and I are both back to working, is very much discouraging. We already get less sleep than either of us would really want to be getting, but the one thing we’ve always been able to rely on throughout the last six month is that our kid has been a very good night sleeper, capable of sleeping through the entire night. But now that’s been compromised, and we’re very much feeling frazzled and defeated on a nightly basis, as we have no time to really wind down and relax, without the anxiousness of worrying about if/when she’ll wake up unexpectedly, and we’ll be greeted via monitor of angry cries and screaming.
Suffice to say, teething has really been the worst thing about new parenting there has been. I know that all babies are different, but as far as ours is concerned, I don’t think anything has been as painstakingly crushing as the teething experience has been. I know this storm too, will eventually pass, and it’ll hopefully be back to some semblance of normalcy again, but until then, it’s a nightmare every single night. And the fact that she’ll have like 30 teeth give or take to grow in, it’s only a matter of time before we realize that this will either happen frequently, or mercifully only in bunches.
