An off afternoon

I am a lucky mum, I'll go ahead and say it, my Chicken is a 'good' baby.  She is mostly happy, smiley, and fun to be around.  She rarely cries, will go to strangers easily and doesn't mind when her routine (what little of it we have) is disrupted.

For example in the fifty plus flying hours we did in the last month (yep thats right, it takes 24 hours to get to NZ from here) she only really got upset once during the final two hours before we landed back in London from NZ.  She was so shattered and 'overloaded with information' that she couldn't fall asleep.  After half an hour of walking up and down the plane I gave her some baby paracetamol to help her to sleep, which she did straight away.

Basically what I'm saying is, she rarely gets upset, but today, and this afternoon in particular was a different story altogether.

I think Chicken has properly started teething.  Her symptoms include lots and lots of dribble, spotty cheeks, an insistence on sticking every thing and anything in her mouth and chewing on it (hard too, she can really gnaw on your fingers!).

The final clue was the little pale white bump on her bottom gum.  And the fact that when I rubbed my fingers over it she seemed to get some relief.  I put the teething ring in the freezer, rubbed some teething gel on the bump, and waited.  There was no relief.

My poor little Chicken continued to cry and I began to develop a deep sympathy for people whose babies have colic.  I mean its not as if Chicken has never cried.  Her fifth night alive was a low light, as were the bedtimes during weeks 8-10.  But this was different.  Her cries were different.

She actually sounded like she was in pain.  So I brought out the big guns, the paracetamol.  Now usually within five minutes of taking the Calpol, Chicken conks out fast asleep.  Not this time, no, this time the crying continued.  So we went for a walk around the house, and upstairs I found some relief by way of the mobile above her cot.  We bought this mobile ages ago when we planned to move Chicken out of our room.  Then I chickened (skuse the pun) out and she's been in her travel cot in our room so the mobile hasn't had much use. She was transfixed by the animals and the music.  The crying slowly subsided and her body began to relax, I felt hopeful!

We came downstairs as I hoped we could have a snooze on the couch, but then the crying started up again, even louder if that was possible!  By this stage I was starting to check my watch every five seconds hoping that Andrew would arrive home from work (which he didn't it was way too early).  So upstairs we went to stare at the mobile again and finally, finally, finally she fell asleep on my chest while I leaned against the wall.  She slept for about forty five minutes, which made me very (if a little uncomfortable)

Since then she's been quite subdued and definitely not her usual self.  I'm hoping that we wake up tomorrow and see that her little tooth has poked through!  Otherwise I think it will be a long day...