March 6, 2002 - Wednesday
I had the boys myself this evening while their mother attended a work-related function and Jeremy cried for about the first 40 minutes, not nonstop, but pretty consistently. Beforehand, I might have thought Harry would have caused most of the problems for the three of us because last evening he threw up and he remained sick and lying on the sofa much of the day. But, in this particular situation, that worked out to something of an advantage. Harry was not running circles around the house while I attended to a screaming baby. Better still for this circumstance, we had earlier today, for the first time, introduced Harry to a video. Harry watches some TV, but not much and we've never shown him a video: something that didn't have commercial and with programming that we could control and watch over again. He caught on very quickly to this idea and watched the Thomas the Tank Engine video several times even though he was at first viewing frightened by some of the crashes in the stories. Luckily for me, he had just started again when Jeremy's troubles began.

What Jeremy's discomfort was is, of course, impossible to pin down. It could be that his mother wasn't there, as she does spend a lot of time with him. But, I don't think so. Jeremy's baby-sitter has actually called the last two times he has been there with concerns about uncharacteristic crying and I think this was something of the same trouble. The most obvious cause might be something related to teething, although it seems unlikely that true teething or even teeth budding under the gums will really start for another several weeks. Nonetheless, as with Harry at this age still months removed from his first tooth, Jeremy has some clear anxiety associated with his gums. He is chewing on whatever is near, nursing seems to cause pain, and rubbing his gums is, minimally, a great distraction. It may not be teething, Harry's original doctor as much as scoffed at the idea, but my experience with two baby boys says there's definitely something going on with unseen teeth and raw young gums.


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