Frenchless In Paris: Chichi and Her Tooth (teeth) Story

when chichi was born they (the doctors) at the hospital immediately let me breastfeed her right after she came out (of course they cleaned her first, then they gave her to me to feed). the moment she latched on to me i already felt pain. but hey, she's my first child, and that was my first time to breastfeed, so naturally i thought the pain was normal. a few minutes after feeding, the doctors took her from me for a physical check, while i went to sleep (it was 2 in the morning then, i think, and i was toooooooooo tired). i remember i haven't dozed off too long when alan came in to my room and started to shake me excitedly. he asked me if i knew that our daughter had teeth. i was too sleepy and bangenge that my only reply was, "talaga? di nga?" then i prompty went back to sleep.

the next morning, i was breastfeeding chichi and was feeling the pain in my nipples again when i remembered the dream (or so i thought) i had of alan telling me that our daughter has teeth. so i unlatched my daughter from my breasts and opened her mouth. and voila!

chichi's gums approximately seven hours after she was born

wow!!! so it was true then! and that was why it hurt like hell? hehe..

chichi's gums on her second day

on the second day of breastfeeding, the pain was already starting to take its toll on my nipples. i almost gave up breastfeeding altogether, but the doctors and the nurses in the hospital in which i gave birth support breastfeeding so much that they were giving me different options to lessen the pain. upon the nurse's suggestion, i used some sort of a silicone cap (probably the same material they used for baby bottle teethings) over my breast, cupped over my nipples. so that whenever she breastfeeds, she was biting on the silicone instead of my skin. but it worried me that chichi wasn't that much of a latcher, and everytime she sucks, the cap falls loose from my skin and she sucks in air, too, along with the milk. so at the end of the day, i stopped using the silicone cup altogether.

on the third day, chichi's two prenatal teeth have fully erupted from her gums

on the third day, my daughter's two lower incisors have pushed out fully and were already causing my nipples to bleed while she's feeding! but my doctor and my mother insisted that i kept on breastfeeding her. she also said that no matter how sore i became, no matter how many times my nipples bleed, she told me they will always heal by themselves in a matter of hours. i didn't believe her. but i listened to her. and besides, the nurse suggested that i apply some sort of cream (i think it was lanolin) to my sore nipples to help with the pain. so that's what i did.

i continued to breastfeed my daughter until she was eight months old. i took her to work with me, and i breastfed her at feeding times. whenever we went out i'd go to a corner and breastfeed her when she's hungry (breastfeeding meant there's really no specific feeding time) it's a good thing that here in france, breastfeeding in public is not considered indecent... but you should still try to do it as decently as possible, though (",)

in the beginning we considered to have the teeth pulled out. but the doctors and eventually, her dentist (she had to regularly see a dentist to check if the teeth were wobbly and to determine if they were choking hazard) decided that they were sturdy enough to be left alone, unless they start wobbling. and later on they also determined that her prenatal teeth were also her baby teeth. so if we decided to pull them out, she'd have had two holes in her gums until her permanent teeth grow out, which, the dentist said, won't, until she's atleast 6 (at the earliest) or 7 years old.

turns out he was wrong. well, atleast in my daughter's case.

this morning, she was standing in front of the mirror while she was waiting for me to get all my stuff ready (i was going to drop her to school on my way to work). then she came up behind me and opened her mouth to show me her gums. at five years old, chichi's first permanent tooth erupted atleast a year sooner than they're normally supposed to come out.