No one told me that teething during the two's was about three hundred times worse than during infancy.
Of course, no one else has to deal with Evie. She takes "no pain tolerance" to a whole different level.
This has been a tough week. After going to visit my in-laws this weekend, we discovered that both girls are teething. Elly has at least four teeth coming in and Evie is apparently cutting some new molars. Oh. Joy.
Evie, despite her daredevil attitude, has absolutely no ability to tolerate pain. The least little bump or scrape and she has a meltdown. And yeah, part of that is being two. And part of that is just who she is. So all week every couple of minutes she breaks down into tears and hysterics and screams "Teeth hurt! Evie's teeth hurt!" She will wail for a minute or two and then stop and resume her normal activities. Well, Sunday and Monday nights she woke up every hour or so through the night screaming and crying about her teeth. Of course, this woke me up.
Elly also woke up intermittently, crying for a lost paci or her fuzzy blanket. Which she only really does when something else is going on like teething or if she's sick.
To top all the fun teething business off, my mom tells me on Monday that she thinks she's getting sick. Panic ensues. What on earth will we do if my mom gets sick? I mean, she watches the kids every single day while we work. Oh my gosh.
On Tuesday morning, both girls wake up with coughs and runny noses, on top of the teething. And as disappointing as it is for them to get sick at any time, the week of Christmas just seems really unfair. They were miserable and after not sleeping for several days (Elly kept me up all night on Saturday too!) I was miserable. When we left the house Tuesday morning I just cried because I felt so overwhelmed and exhausted.
My mom was feeling better Tuesday night and volunteered to keep Evie so that maybe I could get a little more sleep. As fearful as I was that it would totally backfire for all of us, I agreed. Evie went to bed early and slept pretty good at my mom's. Elly actually slept really well too. Which means that I slept really well! Eight hours of uninterrupted sleep made me a much more pleasant person to be around. Though of course the teething is on going.
A couple of nights of good rest and both babies are much better. Evie seems to be completely over the cold and her teething seems to come and go. Elly still has a runny nose but seems to be feeling okay.
I was just so unprepared for how much awful teething could be at this point. I mean, instead of crying and getting a paci and some snuggles and just going to sleep like she did when she was little, Evie screams. She asks me to make it stop hurting. She asks for Tylenol and Orajel. Even if she just had them. She looks at me with those big blue eyes, tears pouring down her cheeks, and says "Mommy, teeth hurt!" and she expects me to fix it. And really, there's not a damn thing I can do. It's a horribly heartbreaking sort of feeling. Snuggles don't mend the pain and she can't just sleep through it. As her mother, I'm supposed to take care of her and she obviously considers pain management an aspect of that care. And she acts like I am being deliberately lazy and irresponsible by not taking that pain away.
Elly cries. I give her a paci. She cries some more and I give her some Orajel. If she keeps crying, she dozes off. It's a beautiful system. One that I didn't realize that I appreciated as much as I do until I discovered it gone. A coping mechanism that babies leave behind when they become children. And evidently coping with pain isn't something a two-year-old has developed.
I'm hoping we all continue to get sleep. It's amazing how quickly your emotional state erodes once you stop sleeping. I consider myself a fairly level-headed and intelligent human being but after two nights of not sleeping I felt broken. My brain was not functioning. I felt frayed and overly emotional. Irritable, cranky and grumpy. I don't want to be feeling that way this weekend. I'm far to excited about the holiday celebrations to want them polluted by lack of sleep.
Two more nights. One more day. And we'll be officially in the Christmas weekend. I am so very excited. We're ready for Santa at my house! Here's hoping we all stay well-rested and non-snotty so we can enjoy the weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment