Wednesday, December 19, 2007

That Bites!

It's happened before, but never like this. I thought I understood how painful it could be... But I didn't know it could hurt that bad! I didn't realize that it could go from being so sweet to very!suddenly!very!painful!

That's right, the Pumpkin bite me while I was nursing her to sleep last night. She's had a cold and she's been teething, so I'm hoping it was just due to her uncomfort. During previous teething bouts, she has bitten, but in those cases she started slowly and I was able to feel it coming and stop her quickly. This time, it was sudden, it was hard, and I was not smooth in my movements to stop her.

Out of the blue, she bit down hard. I yelled out and jerked sharply. She bit down harder in her surprise at my yelling and movement. I proceeded to yell louder and poke her in the cheek in my effort to get my finger in her mouth and pry her off. I finally was able to fish-hook her jaw with my finger and pull her away from my breast.

And she looked at me with a look of surprise and fright her bight eyes, made the most perfect open-mouthed frown, and burst out crying as if I had done something to her!

Meanwhile, my nipple was throbbing in pain, and I was in a little bit of shock. But as a mom, I immediately put that aside and held the baby to my shoulder to calm her down, telling her it was alright and we'd nurse again in a minute. After we both calmed down and my nipple felt a little better, we were able to finish our nursing session, with her peacefully drifting off to sleep.

I had heard that baby bites could be bad, but I hadn't realized how bad. I had read what you are supposed to do (don't show a big reaction and calmly disengage the baby from your nipple), but I did not do that. In fact, I was so the opposite of calm, Londo came running up to the nursery to make sure I was okay because he'd heard my yelling through the baby monitor. I'm hoping that next time I react faster and better.

Who am I kidding, I'm really hoping that I scared the bejeezes out of her and there won't be a next time!

4 comments:

ImpostorMom said...

God I hope there is no next time. I have been plagued by biting since Boog was about 9 months or so. It goes in waves, nothing for the longest time then he'll bite me every single time until I think I've reached my breaking point and then he'll stop.

I am currently nursing (ha, no pun intended) a wound on my right nipple. I thought it would be okay and I could power through with out taking him off that side but the cut got worse and I felt like an open wound was not a good thing considering all the bacteria that lives in our mouths. The last thing I need after 12 months is mastitis. So I'm back to pumping my right side for a little while. Blech!

Because of this I am cutting out his 11am nursing session so he's down to just morning and night. Don't sweat the reaction, I mean really how could you not react.

b*babbler said...

Does no one tell these little ones that not to bite the boob that feeds you?

Hope you heal soon!

cynthia said...

The biting was a really difficult time for me! Nothing I did seemed to work to fix it, but eventually she did stop. Then it started again when she was older and had a sneaky look on her face and a smile, as if she was trying to play...

Anonymous said...

my little bro turned into biter. mom took it pretty personally. :) come the 3rd or 4th bite, little bro was taken off the teat. :) no discussion.

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