Pardon My French: But Teething is HELL

There. I've said it.
Teething is hell. Miserable, utter, total hell.

I am sort of surprised by the vehemence of my reaction to this routine right of passage, especially since we've been through three rounds of vaccinations and seven or eight weeks of non-stop illness with The Tanker.

I thought both were bad.

For the record, I wasn't wrong. They were bad. It's just that this is So. Much. Worse.

Here's the difference: shots hurt but for just a short time. You get them and there is immediately an end in sight. You give the little guy some Tylenol, and a few hours later, it's over. Done. Finito.

And when your kid is sick, he wants to cuddle, and you can tap into those great maternal reserves and coo at him and console him and rock him and watch cartoons with him, and a couple of days later, it too, is over. You get a break before the next round of illness begins.

That is so not the case with teething. It sneaks up on you ...usually without any warning. Your baby is the happy, adoring, loving child you're used to one minute, and then BAM! The rivulets of drool appear. And then, within a couple of hours, you're locked up in the house with a screeching demon child who won't nap, who doesn't want to cuddle, who doesn't want to play. A child who has somehow, all on his own, developed a so-piercing-it-can-penetrate-through-all-the-walls-of-the-house-and-burrow-into-your-inner-ear wail that simply won't stop.

And you want to conjure up all that good maternal sympathy. But you can't. Because on the surface your kid looks fine, and so you just want him to be quiet and take a nap.

Oh, you get on some level that teething hurts, but you can't see it, and he can't explain it and nothing you do makes it better, anyway, so please, for the love of God, child...would you please just go to sleep?

Yes, that was our weekend. Scott is cutting his second tooth. And for some reason, its so much worse than the first one. The drool started Saturday afternoon, and I could see it there, the hard whiteness, right under the gum. By 2 a.m. Saturday, he was a whiny mess with a fever, and by early afternoon Sunday, my sweet baby was a holy terror who refused to nap.

I took him for a walk. I rocked him. We gave him infant Motrin, tried Baby Orajel and even resorted to dipping my pinky finger into some Jack Daniels and rubbing it on his sore gums. None of it worked for more than 20 minutes.

So for the first time since he was born, I plunked Scott in his carseat and drove him around greater Phoenix. For almost two hours. We went to Carefree and back, got on the Loop 101, drove through Scottsdale, south to Tempe, back over to downtown Phoenix and up north to our house.

For my efforts, I was rewarded with a 38-minute nap and a $45 Costco gas charge on my American Express card. Oh - and a big toothless grin from Scott, who apparently decided that running me ragged was a great deal of fun.

Thanks for driving me around all afternoon so I could nap, mommy. Wait, why do you look so tired??

We spent Sunday night listening to him howl every 45 minutes. Then finally, mercifully, he conked out in his swing around 2 a.m.

The demon tooth has broken through the gum now, so we're really hoping that he'll turn back into our adorable little munchkin soon. Until, you know, his top two teeth start coming in.

Teething is hell. Intermittent hell that last about two years, or so my sister kindly told me this morning.