One Nutty Mama: Already a Biter

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Already a Biter

My son Maxx got his first tooth at one week shy of being 8 months old. I am positive my daughters all had multiple teeth by 8 months. I'm not complaining. I was actually dreading the day his teeth would come, they always want to test their chompers out on human flesh like little zombies. It's usually my poor defenseless Mommy flesh that is on their menu. My husband believes that Maxx was holding back on growing them in because when teeth appeared was when I stopped breastfeeding with the Nadia.

It wasn't the teeth appearing that scared me off breastfeeding. I had stopped breastfeeding Nadia after getting repeatedly being bitten while nursing her. It was so bad on many occasions that I was left bleeding and dreading the next time I would need to bare my tender bits to her. At the time I didn't know any better that she wasn't nursing but instead messing around when she would hurt me with her chompers. I didn't know I had never breast-fed a child that had teeth. With each baby I have breastfed I have been able to nurse longer and longer with each one.

Appearance of the tooth

I was sitting around after dinner watching tv while the little man cruised around the front room in his regular super army crawl. He pulled himself up on our coffee table as he always does to see what he could throw to the ground or check for any papers he could attempt to eat. Instead he started chewing on the edge of the table, so I pull him away and began playing with him. He grabbed my hand and started gnawing on it as usual. I felt something scratching me, so I inspected his mouth thinking he had some contraband. I was in shock to see a tooth since not even minutes before he had no teeth at all.

I started yelling OMG a tooth! My oldest kids come running and ask if I had lost a tooth. (being stuck in the losing tooth mode) Which is understandable considering in the past two months my two oldest daughters have lost around 10 teeth combined. (leaving our 4 yr old jealous of the all tooth fairy earnings) Once they found out it was baby Maxx's first tooth, they instantly started cheering. This little man is gonna wonder why he feels the need to have lots of cheering and applause.

I was going to wait until daddy got home from work to tell him but I can't keep a secret/surprise. Daddy was on speaker phone when I told him about the new tooth. After crowing with pride about his little man becoming such a big boy, he then asks me if this means breastfeeding will soon be coming to an end. Before I could get a response out Maxx was vigorously shaking his head no. When hubby didn't get a response because I was giggling too hard, he repeated his question and Maxx shook his head no all over again when daddy mentioned breastfeeding ending. We have our answer and will continue to breastfeed hopefully to 1-year-old. Little man shows no signs of wanting to give it up. Hubby says it is the boobies addiction that most men have it's just starting early.

Abuse of tooth power

That little tooth was not even 24 hours old and Maxx had try it out on my poor defenseless nipple. This time I knew what to do though. I still said ow because it still freaking hurt. I immediately told him no bite and set him down away from me and ended the breastfeeding session. He startled at me screeching ow but then laughed. As soon as I told him no bite and set him away from the boob you would think it was him that had just been bitten. Maxx was howling down the moon, all while giving me the most pitiful looks. For the sake of my poor nipples I stuck to my guns and again told him no bite and handed him a toy to play with instead. Less than a minute later, he had given up the howling and had turned his pitiful looks to glares of indignation.

Have you had to handle a biter? How did you overcome it?