I’m not kidding. Now that my child has his first tooth (praise the LORD!) I feel like it’s safe to say that I’m knowledgeable enough on this subject to say how horrible it is. Let’s not forget that I gave birth to my child with zero drugs and I pushed for 3 hours and I still say teething is a million times worse! Here’s why:
1. You choose (typically) to go through childbirth before you actually go through it. You want to have a baby so you sign up for the pain in order to get one. You don’t choose for your child to go through teething, it is totally out of your control (and makes you wonder…do we really need teeth?!)
2. When you are in the pains of childbirth you have a goal and you know that the end is near. Kye started at 3 months old having teething symptoms, yet he did not have his first tooth until he was 8 months old. No one is in labor for 6 months.
3. With childbirth you are in the pain so you can manage it, with teething your child is in pain. Not only does this break your heart but it is annoying as crap because they don’t know how to manage it at all.
4. With childbirth if you take drugs they are hardcore and will literally take all the pain away, Children’s Tylenol lasts 4 hours, if that.
5. You know you are pregnant. You know that in 9 months you will be in labor. You have that time to prepare. There is no warning with teething. One day you have a happy, sweet child…the next you have a screaming, drooling, running nose, chewing on everything mess.
6. When giving birth everyone caters to you. They feel bad for you and want to help you rest. With teething everyone feels bad for the baby. No one thinks about the woman with no sleep wearing the same pjs she’s been living in for three days.
7. The signs of going into labor are pretty clear: your water breaks, you start hurting and BAM baby arrives. The signs of a tooth breaking through are all over the place and not trustworthy: fussiness? low fever? runny nose…these do NOT mean that he’s about to get a tooth. There is no tell-tale sign that a tooth is actually finally going to present itself.
8. After giving birth to your husband’s child he is so grateful he thanks you over and over again for all your hard work. After all the hard work you do helping your child cut his first tooth your baby will never thank you. Unless of course you have a daughter and then she becomes a mom and understands what you went through (thank you MOM!).
9.When preparing for labor you have a birthing plan that you come up with that you can follow. With cutting a tooth…all bets are off.
10. At the end of childbirth you have a baby, at the end of cutting a tooth you have a tooth and only the promise of the many, many left to come.
