The Elusive Tooth makes an appearance

After close to 6 weeks, we finally have a tooth sighting. Maybe "sighting" is a strong word, being that Sophia's tongue is the ultimate gate keeper, "feeling" might be a better option.

The teething experience has been quite an interesting one. Over the past month and a half, Sophia will have a random wake up once a week/10 days in which she is fairly inconsolable and appears to be in pain. After bouncing, rocking, singing and nursing attempts fail, we end up deducing that it is teething pain and give her a dose of Tylenol. She generally settles back down to sleep and is a happy camper in the morning. But until this morning, there has been no sign of the tooth actually breaking through. Here's a picture that sums it all up though:



I've felt a rise in her bottom gumline for at least the past 3-4 weeks and have just been waiting for that little bugger to poke through. At times, I though I was being neurotic about the teething and that it must be something else that was bugging her (who knows what else??). My mom swears by giving her the good, crusty end of a loaf Italian bread (referred to in our house as the coolie). She said it worked like magic for getting my teeth to pop out. It was on my list to pick up at the grocery store for Monday, but looks like we won't need it! (at least for this time around...)

Sophia went down to bed fairly easily last night (we took her with us to a sailing dinner so she could meet all of Dave's boatmates and friends) and so by the time we got home, she was ready to sleep. About 2 hours later, though, she woke up screaming. I wasn't sure what had caused her to stir, but thought she might settle back down after a few minutes. I quickly realized there was no settling after Dave picked her up and she got even higher pitched. When I lightly touched her bottom gums she about jumped out of Dave's arms, the poor thing!! I gave her a dose of Tylenol (well, the generic kind because of the recall) and let her nurse for awhile to head back to sleep.
When she woke in the morning, she let me feel her gums and low and behold, we had the ridge of the tooth poking out. Hooray!! Now - how long till this little guy is all the way out, I'm not sure. Hopefully it's quick. 1 down, 19 more baby teeth to go.