Molars = pure misery!
I’ve been told they aren’t fun, but seriously it’s ridiculous how horrible they are!! Some days I actually wonder who is suffering more, Baby MPB or the Adult MPB’s? Needless to say, it’s been a miserable week in our house! Needless to say, like almost all our past experiences with teething, teething is just cruel.
Also, I thought they came when children are older then Baby MPB is?! On every chart I can find on google he is too young to be getting this miserable things!
Needless to say, sleep has become a lost (and greatly missed) art form. I still don’t know how parents handle broken up sleep on a regular basis – I admire anyone who manages to survive a baby who doesn’t sleep well on a regular basis! This lack of sleep is particularly troublesome from Mr. MPB as we’ve decided I just cannot give up as much sleep as he can without getting sick. So, he’s doing 2 nights in a row and I’m doing 1. Clearly, it’s not fair. But we need to attempt to keep my immune system up because a 2:1 ration is better then a 2:0 ratio with him doing everything. (That said, one thing I know as a parent is that when a baby is awake screaming in the night, no-one in the house is sleeping regardless of who’s night it is, so neither of us are sleeping well).
These molars have made our troubles with giving Baby MPB Baby Tylenol/Advil a significant problem. He seems to have a gag reflex that as soon as we use the eyedropper and it touches his mouth he pukes. And he simply will not take any form of milk or formula if there is even a hint of medication within it. So, we’ve started trying medication in juice. I hate giving him juice – as a person who has horrible teeth I’m doing everything I can to help prevent early tooth decay, and our doctor told us no juice yet, so we were avoided it like the plague. But, we’ve now tried lacing grape juice and apple juice with baby pain relievers. Needless to say, those didn’t work.
We finally discovered that he will take pain medication if it’s in orange juice with some pulp. So, every single time he needs pain relief we began to fully relying on a few ounces of orange juice with either baby Tylenol or baby Advil in it. And of course we are making sure to brush his teeth frequently. Which he despises. Really, we are all just having a lot of fun tricking him into taking medication and then forcing him to have his teeth brushed. Until of course he started refusing the orange juice after a few days of it. Now we have absolutely no idea what to try. We are at a complete loss.
All I want to know right now is how long does it take for a typical molar to fully erupt through the gum? We can now clearly see some shiny white teeth poking through the gum line, so we know with certainty that they are coming through right now. But molars are big, and we definitely don’t see an entire tooth worth of shiny whiteness. I know it’s different for each child, but are we facing weeks of this? Or just a few more days?
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We recently went to 2 daycares to check them out as they both held an open house to greet potential new families.
First, I must say, thank you to everyone who commented on my original post about our upcoming daycare visits. You all helped us out so much! I think Mr. MPB and I have both read the comment section multiple times and I’m still trying to find time to respond to every comment because we totally appreciated your insight!
Honestly, thanks to everyone’s sound advice we felt equipped with the ‘right’ questions to ask. Questions like:
- how frequently they sterilize toys;
- how the deal with discipline;
- what are their meals like;
- what is the sick policy;
- what is the kid-supervisor ratio;
- what is the commute to each location like;
- when and how do the children nap;
- how much time do the children spend outside each time;
- what is security like;
- do they have set pick-up/drop-off times;
- when and how often do they communicate with parents;
- how much does part time and full time care cost;
- what are the wait-times for enrollment;
- what is their staff retention like, etc.
I totally understand what so many people said in their comments about watching Baby MPB’s reaction and also just listening to our gut. Mr. MPB and I had very strong instant feelings about both centres. And our reactions were nearly identical.
I should point out that both of these facilities are run by the same organization and are accredited by our provincial government. So technically they should follow the same government rules and implement the same organizational programming.
So here’s the colesnotes version of our visits:
- Location 1 is about 10 minutes from our house. We know someone who has 2 children enrolled in this daycare which meant we had some insight into their operations before we arrived. Upon arrival Baby MPB was pretty happy to play in the space. The centre’s director was very good with him and she answered all our questions. The centre was bright with lots of windows. It was colourful and the rooms were of a decent size. We lead the conversation, and the centre’s director took the time to answer our questions and added little bits of information here and there. She showed us the entire facility and explained the ages for each room and when/how children move between rooms. She also indicated that the facility can house about 60 kids and they currently have a waitlist so it will probably take a few months to get Baby MPB into the facility.
- Location 2 is actually closer to our house, maybe 5 minutes if we hit all the traffic lights on the drive. Baby MPB didn’t instantly engage with the space and the toys, but to be fair it was getting close to lunch time and he was getting hungry. The entrance to the facility had about 10 outdoor stairs which I instantly didn’t like as I can see ice/snow as making the twice daily entrance with a small child frustrating. Inside, the facility wasn’t very bright as nearly all the windows were covered by dark blinds. It just looked dingy, like it was in need of a new paint job and a general refreshment. The baby room (where Baby MPB would start) was really small. We were not able to see the entire facility, just the 2 rooms that Baby MPB would be in for the first while. We weren’t really given the opportunity to ask questions and we most definitely didn’t lead the conversation. Instead, it felt like a rehearsed sales pitch was being delivered to us. As part of her sales pitch we did learn that the facility can hold almost 120 kids and they have immediate capacity so Baby MPB could start there tomorrow.
Just from my description of the centres, you can probably guess which one we both preferred.
We have actually put Baby MPB on the waitlist at Location 1! I still have some mixed feelings about this, mostly related to my desire to keep him at home longer (probably a post for another day), but I am glad that we have him on the list so if we lose our temporary nanny we have the possibility of alternate childcare.
All this said, we are still planning to visit 2 other daycare centres in the coming weeks when we can align our schedules with their visitor times. They are both further away from our house with a far less then idea commute, but we’d really like to see a few daycares run by a different organization.
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