Sprouting teeth

As soon as we arrived home from our vacation to Wyoming (on July 28, almost two weeks ago now!), I felt Emma's first tooth coming in!  It's her front left bottom tooth.  It was just breaking the surface so it still has a ways to go, but it was there.  I still haven't seen it, because she doesn't open her mouth easily for me to see, but it's there.

Anyway, she had been having some rough nights prior to that while we were on vacation, so it started to make sense.  We had to give her ibuprofen several nights in a row those first few days, and then things seemed to be getting better….until a few days ago.  She started having some rough nights again (last night in particular was rough), and when I felt in her mouth now I found out that she actually has two teeth coming in (both front bottom teeth at once)!

I had been wondering how quick they'd all come in now considering how late her first one came in relative to when Evan got his.  However, he also got both of his front bottom teeth within one week of each other.  

The hardest part about the rough nights is that we just don't know what to do to help her out.  She wakes up crying, and so we go try to console her but nothing seems to make her better.  Cradling and rocking her, bouncing her, holding her upright over our shoulder, sitting on our lap in the rocking chair, etc…she cries and fights us in all those positions.  So we end up putting her back in her crib where she cries more, but usually gets back to sleep eventually.  Of course we give her ibuprofen and a cold teething toy in the meantime, but the ibuprofen takes time to kick in and she usually throws the teething toys on the ground in protest.  Sometimes she'll find the toy next to her in the crib and suck or chew on it, but not last night.  She just seemed inconsolable…poor thing.  Maybe we need to find more baby oragel like we used with Evan for more instant relief?  I just have heard bad things about that, like it can make them choke if it numbs their throat (luckily we never encountered that with Evan though), so I was hoping to get her through the teething process without it this time.

Her main teething or comfort measure is to suck/chew on the top of her sleep sack or to nurse on me.  I have found myself being her human pacifier many nights and multiple times per night during the last few weeks.  The only problem is that when she decides to be done, she goes straight back to being super fussy usually, so it's just a stop gap measure that we can sometimes use to help wait for the ibuprofen to kick in.  I sure hope it gets easier on her…poor thing.