Josiah's Diary - March 17th

Ugh, my gums hurt. Mummy says I'm teething which means I will get teeth soon. I think getting teeth is supposed to be exciting but I'm not too excited right now - I just want the pain to go away. My cheeks are hot and red, my gums hurt and I've got a sore rash on my chin from all the dribbling I've been doing recently. The pain is making me grumpy and some days it's hard to concentrate on playing cos all I want to do is poke my gums and chew on stuff to try to find a way to ease my discomfort.

Mummy's been looking on the internet to find ideas for things to help with the pain so she keeps handing me all kinds of weird things to chew on. The other day she suggested we try some stuff called teething gel.  When she showed me the tube I had a good old chew on it but apparently that's not how it's supposed to work. Next thing I know mummy had her fingers in my mouth poking my gums and putting some horrible tasting stuff in my mouth. My mouth felt weird, I was swallowing all this funny stuff and I just really didn't like it. I cried and cried and cried so we haven't tried that stuff again since.

Another time mummy gave me a frozen wash cloth to chew on while I tried to fall asleep. It did help a bit but when I woke up it was all unfrozen and my bed and sleeping bag were wet so that wasn't so good.

Chewing on people's fingers is really good and it's fun putting lots of different people's hands in my mouth to find ones with just the right size fingers - but daddy said I'm not supposed to try to eat people I don't know.

Once mummy gave me an old wooden spoon to chew on and that was quite good. I've also found a rattle with chunky plastic squares that seems to help. I think my favourite so far though is chewing on the edge of tables. It's great when I find a table just right to get my whole mouth round the edge and have a good chew - ah relief!