Friday, April 30, 2010

Teething challenges

Yesterday I got an email from DH that tersely said, "Cameron has a 100.5 fever so I am leaving soon to go get her." As soon as I got that email I shook my first in the air at life in general. In a way I was glad that I have been so swamped at work that I didn't answer my phone when daycare called me first. I didn't even see the call because I have been literally running from meeting to meeting and sometimes I even managed to be on two at once. Blackberry in one ear and my desk phone in the other. And I was a critical component on both calls. Gah.

If I had answered the phone I would have had to immediately cancel a series of calls that I had set up to deal with a major issue that could derail my entire project. Did I feel some guilt that it was DH and not me going to comfort our daughter? A smidgeon. But a minuscule one. Work has been absolutely insane and all I could think was, "Crap, now she has to stay home tomorrow too." I scrambled to cancel some non-critical calls but there were still about 5 hours of meetings I had to be in Friday (today). Fortunately daycare threw us a bone. We knew that the fever was a result of teething. They knew it too. She wasn't eating anything and was crying constantly with her hand in her mouth. Cameron ended up getting jarred baby food and a bottle of formula while she was there. That's how badly her mouth was hurting.

When DH picked Cameron up the daycare teachers told him that if she was doing fine tomorrow that she could come back in. It was like manna dropping from heaven. That's how relieved I was when DH told me. He brought her home and immediately administered our life saving drug, Motrin. It works so much better for teething than Tylenol because it lasts longer and helps with the swelling. Cameron seemed to sleep well (no major wake ups necessitating a new dose of medicine) and actually opened her mouth wide and sucked down the medicine this morning. Perhaps she's finally realizing the cause and effect of medicine providing pain relief? Her bottom left molar hasn't popped through the gum yet and I'm already dreading the top 2 that still have to come in. Her other teething pains were nothing compared to this. Plus, now that's she older she has a much bigger set of lungs on her and the incessant crying isn't fun for any of us.

For the parents of other infants who have yet to experience the pains of molars, let this post be a warning to you. Use drugs early and often. Any other horror stories out there about the big teething moments for your children?

8 comments:

A. said...

What is your daycare's threshhold (does that have 2 h's or 1, BTW) for sending a child home with a fever? 100.5 seems pretty low-grade to me. Ours is anything over 101, I think.

LauraC said...

Our threshold is 101.5 at school.

Do you really want horror stories? Maybe it will make you feel better than a couple of days of whining is not that bad? Alex's canines came in during the same time he was going through the height of the 18 month sleep regression.

The combination resulted in 60-90 minute uber tantrums (completely out of control screaming and kicking) as soon as his medicine wore off at night, he would wake up screaming uncontrollably and he would not go back to sleep. He slept with us for a month and we are definitely not co-sleepers.

We tried waking him to give him meds before the first wore off and it would only cause him to have these tantrums in the middle of the night.

It was my least favorite experience with Alex, most certainly my least favorite time.

Mommy, Esq. said...

I have to agree with Laura - just WAIT until the canines come in - for some reason they are way worse than the molars were. In fact our nanny is taking Ned in for a doctor's visit to have his ears checked. See this HUGE benefit for having a nanny? We never have to worry about fevers. I assume your daycare just tested her temp b/c of her unusual fusiness? Otherwise sounds like they do it too often to try to manufacture a reason to send her home?

Stacey said...

Our daycare's threshhold is 100.1. Way too low in my opinion for incidences like teething!

Amanda said...

I got a recommendation for giving her a carrot to chew on, supervised of course. I guess its long enough to get to the molars and just soft enough to chew on.

susanne13 said...

OK Jake is 15 months, he has 6 teeth and hasn't gotten a new one in 6 months.....BUT I won't be complaining about that :) Good luck!!

Actuary Mom said...

yikes! I'm not looking forward to this!

Actuary Mom said...

My home daycare is pretty flexible. Unless he is calling constantly for his mother, she'll let him stay. Her philosophy is he probably already passed it to all the other kids.

I'm very thankful for her philosophy!