The Early Stages Of Teething

One of the favourite parlour games of new parents is to look at various illnesses and problems which affect babies, and compare the typical symptoms to whatever your little one is doing that day. We've had a busy time of it recently, with a wedding in Nottingham, a 30th birthday party in rural Shropshire, and now we're back in Mrs J's hometown of Monmouth for Christmas (the picture shows G out in her pram enjoying some of the icy Welsh weather). And during these last few days G has given us plenty of material for this parlour game, with a lot of evening crying, excessive drooling, chewing on anything that goes near her mouth, and a pair of very rosy cheeks. The Internet (and it's a fool who doubts what they read on the Internet) says this is probably the early stages of teething.

It can't be real teething, the bit where the teeth actually start poking through the gums. That's not supposed to start for a while yet. And looking carefully into little G's mouth (as I often do, usually when mopping up her latest post-feed vomit), there certainly aren't any teeth in there. But apparently things do move around inside her gob well ahead of time, so this could be what's causing G to be so difficult.

But to be honest, it doesn't really matter what amateur diagnosis we come up with for G, the solution is always the same. Dose her up with Calpol and hope for the best. See, being a doctor can't be that hard.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What enquiring minds need to know is... have that hat and baby blanket been handknitted? Lovely

-marie

Richard said...

Sadly both the hat (a present) and the blanket (we got it from Mamas and Papas) were shop bought. But the white cardigan she's got on in this picture was hand-knitted. We got it from a charity shop near my mum's in Washington, there was a whole rail of baby clothes obviously knitted by a would-be granny without a little one to knit for, so we had to have one!