pit of snakes...

The woes of parenting get better day by day. There is one thing those baby books need to do... they need to preface every single book they write with a warning about teething. Their first chapter should be about teething... not an insert here and there about the symptoms and what you can expect. Who cares what your newborn can do by day 3, it's the warning about teething that really needs to be shoved in parents' faces. They need to prepare unsuspecting parents about the nightmare that lies ahead. They need to, especially, prepare those parents who have "angel" babies. I say this because, according to Tracy Hogg's "The secrets of the baby whisperer", that is exactly what I have. My baby is mellow, undemanding, extremely adaptable and doesn't cry when she wakes up. I could literally go on about how she fits the "angel baby" description to a tee. I must say, however, as of late, my child has turned into someone else's child. When I set her down for her naps, she screams, wails, flails, shakes and gasps just as though she were set down in a pit of snakes (that's what I'd do anyway!) At times, she proceeds to cry inconsolably for several hours and her periods of wakefulness last until the wee hours of the morning and are beyond normal. So I have to question whether her teeth are coming in, whether she's going through a growth spurt, whether it's sudden separation anxiety or whether this stems back to the nurse voicing her concerns over my daughter's big head. We are puzzled. Aside from the excessive drooling and this odd behaviour, she shows no other signs of teething. We think we can feel something trying to poke through her gums, but who are we to tell? We've never experienced this before and like I said, those baby books are vague about teething and there is never a chapter, per se, solely about teething. Might I mention that those teething chapters, if there should ever be one, should discuss options for parents when they feel they're about to go over the deep end because their child won't sleep. A screaming, wailing-one-minute- laughing-the-next, wakeful baby at 3:30 a.m is enough to make 2 parents argue out of sheer frustration and exhaustion. One seriously needs the patience of steel to handle a situation like this. So while we await the infamous tooth, we remain irritated, frustrated, sleep deprived, anxious, annoyed and grumpy. Let the woes continue because God knows it has only just begun!