To underline the central conceit of this series – that new parents don’t really know what they’re doing – I would like to inform you that our son is teething. Again. This might sound familiar. It might, in fact, sound identical to the column I wrote five months ago, where I also informed you that our son was teething. I was so certain back then, all on the basis that he was biting things and crying a lot. But, hey, guess what? He wasn’t teething at all. He was biting things and crying a lot, because it turns out that babies quite like biting things and crying a lot. Our son was just being an idiot. A toothless idiot determined to show up his father in this column.
Now, though? Now he is definitely teething. Definitely. How do I know? Because, well, he’s biting things. And he is, um, crying a lot. Which, yes, I know isn’t necessarily a guaranteed harbinger of dental eruption, but this time his gums have dropped. At least I think his gums have dropped. In all honesty, I’m not sure that dropped gums are even actually a thing, but my mum said it once with all the faraway wisdom of a village shaman, and I’m too tired to Google anything these days, so I’ll just believe her. Either way, I’m pretty sure that teeth are bulging up from under his gums. And, to reiterate, he is crying a lot.
But here’s the weird thing – I’m actually quite enjoying the crying this time around. He’s crying like a newborn, howling inconsolably at the sheer cruelty of the world, and that sort of makes the whole thing feel like an opportunity for a do-over.
Back in the early days, when we took him home for the first time, every single scream was a knife to my heart. It wasn’t just a simple expression of discomfort, but a perfectly weighted personal insult, pitched somewhere between “You are bad at your job” and “I will prevent you from ever experiencing happiness again”. Worst of all, I didn’t have the first clue how to fix it. I have met other parents who are adamant that they were immediately OK with the sound of their baby crying. Not me. It has been ten months and my skeleton is still vibrating from that noise.
I have been at this for a while now, and I’ve got a sliver of experience under my belt. Now, when the crying gets out of hand, I am able to stay calm and count my options. Does he need to be held? Can I distract him with hide and seek? Should I get the Calpol? Does he just want his mum? I’ve realised that, quite often, he just wants his mum; either for a feed or because he is considerate enough to realise that I’m about to reach a tricky bit of Assassin’s Creed.
That’s not to say that things are perfect – I’m currently writing this from underneath a mile-thick sheet of exhaustion, for instance, because his last bout of crying happened at three o’clock in the morning – but they’re better. It helps to know that he will quickly calm down and return to his happy, playful default setting. Ten months ago, I would have lacked the perspective to see that.
So we’re getting there. Little by little, we’re Groundhog Daying our way to success. We might even actually be getting good at this. Just think how much better we will be five months from now, when I inevitably write yet another column about how the baby is definitely teething for real this time.
