Many nights recently, my son has awoken and immediately broken into blood-curdling screaming. There is no slow wind up, no whimpering. Just full-throttle screaming. He is teething.
During the day, he chews on his fingers, finds solace in frozen pacifiers and ice in a mesh teether, drools, and pulls on his ears. During the day, when it gets too much, he fusses until he is held and can rest his head on my shoulder.
During the night, he screams. Then, my daughter screams, and I want to join them. Instead my wife and I stumble through the act of getting them both back down to sleep and then return to bed ourselves often with only an hour or two left to sleep.
How was this a good evolutionary idea? I understand breast feeding would be rather difficult if babies were born with a full set of chompers, but this transition is brutal! I don’t have any other practical solutions to this dilemma, and I have no capacity to enact them even if I did.