Ava's Got Teeth!

Miss Ava has been teething for about a month now. It all started back at the end of February when she started to drool like crazy. In addition to the drool, she seemed to have a lot of the tell-tale signs of teething (crazy 'liquid diapers,' a slight fever, a runny nose, etc). We kept waiting for her gums to swell up and blister, but they never did.

When we returned from CO at the beginning of March, we just figured that Ava's sleep routine was off due to the time change, altitude change, the travel, and the fact that she had received her 4-month shots two days after we returned. Well, night after night her sleeping got worse. We were back to a 3 hour sleep schedule, as she would wake up screaming every 3 hours or so. Nothing seemed to soothe her except nursing her, so that's what I did. Her sleep schedule continued to be off up until the beginning of April--March was a L-O-N-G and tiring month!

Right before the time when Matt's parents were here (around March 10th), I could start to feel a little bit of rigidity in her gums. Matt thought I was crazy because her gums weren't swollen (and because I had been saying that she had been teething for a few weeks at this point), but I kept insisting that I thought she was teething. Well, around the 24th of March, I could start to feel sharp edges on her gums. The rigidity and sharpness were slight, but I knew that her gums felt different than normal. Matt refused to stick his finger in her mouth to feel, so it was just my word and me feeling her gums. During the following days, the sharpness got more apparent and I could begin to see something opaque trying to break through her gums. On Friday, March 28th, I really saw the sharp edged buds for the first time (they were still mostly covered by her gums). I was putting Ava in her carseat and the sun was shining right into her open mouth. It was so cool! I tried to get another look at them, but every time I touched her mouth or chin, she stuck her tongue out. Finally, that weekend, Matt felt Ava's sharp mini-buds for the first time. I think she bit his finger and he yelped... he finally believed me!

On April 1st, Ava had not one, but TWO bottom teeth break through her gums completely. So, she officially has two front teeth. These teeth are like the tips of knives or the tines of forks...they're sharp and she's learned that she thinks it's funny to chomp down on Mommy while she's eating. I've started to bite my lip (literally) and not give her a reaction when she does it, and it seems to be working--she's not doing it much anymore. Ava's back to sleeping a little bit more than she did in March, but she's still not back to her normal 8-9 hour long stretch. Over the weekend she gave us a 7.5 hour long stretch, but since then she's only done about 6-6.5 and then another 3. Sometimes she'll give us another 2-3, but now that the sun is nice and bright at 6am, she thinks it's time to get up and play. We're hoping that she'll go back to her old sleep routine of 8-9 hours for her long stretch. We are quickly learning that we definitely took the great sleep we got in January and February for granted!

Here are pictures of Ava's two teeth. The first pictures were taken on the 5th of April and the second set were taken on the 9th. I'd been trying to get pictures of her 'buds' before they broke the skin, but every time all I would get was a blurry mess. It's hard to zoom and keep the focus on the camera when you're trying to get a picture of something so small and opaque...all whilst trying to pry Ava's mouth open without having her tongue stick out. These are the good shots...I hope you can see her teeth! I actually pointed out her teeth in two of the photos (they are the same as the previous photo but with guidance edited in) just in case you have no idea what you're looking at. The pictures I took on the 9th are a bit better, as her teeth are bigger. It's amazing how fast those things grow!

You can barely see her nubs (the glare from her saliva and the angle make it a bit tough to see them)...

This is usually what the photos look like...

You can kind of see her two nubs here...

Here are better pictures of her teefus...