What? A Tooth?!

So over the past week or so Max had been fussy and not sleeping as well at night.  I figured it was because ever since I went back to work after the New Year, I didn't seem to be producing as much milk. (Stress at work, anyone?  Maybe I'll talk about it in another post.)


Here's Max in his cute jacket in the bumbo.  He was happy for approx. 2 minutes and then had to be entertained with something else.

 Max hanging out on the couch with the TV remote - another Peter posed picture.  :)

 This is a picture of us trying to distract Max from screaming when it was time to go to bed - - just turn on the phone and he is immediately fascinated.

Max has liked sucking and chomping on our fingers.  And I have read that it's important for your baby's dental health before they get teeth to rub their gums before they go to sleep at night.  So, on January 14th at night I was rubbing his gums and felt something a little different along his bottom gums than I had felt before.  I had the fleeting thought - "it almost feels like a tooth is coming out" but dismissed it because Max wasn't even 5 months old yet. 

Well, what do you know, I was checking Max's gums the next day and there was no doubt - it was a tooth!!!!!!!!!!  (On the bottom, the front tooth on his right)  I couldn't believe it!  So my little, advanced, baby had his first tooth 4 days before his 5 month birthday. 

Peter jokingly blamed all the extra calcium I was taking on the early appearance of Max's first tooth since the average time to get a first tooth is around 7 months old.

(Apparently when one teethes can be hereditary...I wonder when I had my first tooth, if my mom was here she'd be able to tell me.  Now, there's no one to ask.  It's not the type of thing my dad would remember.  It's another thing I've lost with the passing of my mom - I've lost some of my history.)

He eventually fell asleep with his sweet little hand that he maneuvered out of the swaddle just enough to peek out.  :)

I felt so bad because sure he'd been a little more fussy, woke up more at night, and was drooling a lot.  But I had seen other logical reasons for all of that and teething wasn't one of those.  So, I felt like a bad parent because had I'd known that he was teething I would have been giving him frozen teethers and other things to help him.  :(