by Becky Vieira posted in Parenting

When my son was born I remember looking at him in awe. Every inch of him was perfect. I remarked to the nurse that you could almost see the outline of teeth on his gums. "I've actually seen babies born with teeth," he told me.
I flashed back to earlier the previous day when my son went directly from my womb to my chest to breastfeed, and shuddered. Then I thanked my lucky stars he had no teeth yet. Little did I know I wouldn?t be able to say that much longer.
My son's first tooth made its presence known when he was 3 months old. At first I had no idea why my (somewhat) happy baby was wailing uncontrollably. Okay, I may be romanticizing those first few months. Let?s just say he wailed even more than usual.
Even though everyone told me there was no way he was teething, I knew otherwise. Call it mother?s intuition, or the fact that his gums were swollen and the outline of two teeth were poking up from his bottom gums. We were officially teething.
From there it was like a game of dental whack-a-mole. We?d conquer one pair of teeth and think the worst was over, only to have two more pop up. My son seemed to be in a constant state of teething. On his first birthday he had sixteen teeth!
We tried a teething necklace. I even considered the old wives' solution of rubbing watered-down liquor on his gums. I dipped a Q-tip in booze then ran it under the faucet to dilute it, but I never went through with using it. "He's going to get...