My theory of teething: aka the best theory ever on teething.

Let's start off this post by pretending I have a great photo of the two little white shards poking out of Miloh's bottom gum. You have to pretend because although he likes getting his photo taken right now he's really not to happy about me grabbing his gums long enough to get a shot of his teeth...you know with the excruciating pain and all.

I'm a person who has theories...I'm actually not sure if they would be technically theories...because they are pure fact, but theories sounds cooler.

And here's my theory on teething:

It's based on what I know about human evolution and why we feel pain and such...so the basic stuff you learn in school with maybe some college classes peppered in. You see there is a really good reason to feel pain. If you step on a piece of glass you need the pain to alert you to the fact that your foot is now gushing with blood.

If your tooth hurts you need a little warning to head to the dentist, or back in the day the barber (barbers were dentists my friends) or I suppose really back in the day you'd go to the dude that would whack your tooth out with a rock.

So, yeah pain makes sense.

But I'll tell you what doesn't make any sense...tooth/gum pain on a 5 month old kid. There is absolutely no scientific reason (that I can think of...which means there is none) for that pain.

There's no problem with the teeth, it's normal for them to come in. You can't really do anything for the pain, yeah homeopathic gels, fake Tylenol (the name brand stuff kills) and such work...but not a ton as I found out tonight. And way back when you'd go to that dude with the rock they probably didn't have a good pain reliever.

Since the pain has no real reason to be around there should have been a way that evolution (if you believe in that crazy thing) would shut it off. There are times when pain is shut off because it adds no value like in _____ or when _____ (I'm sure there are at least two instances when pain is shut off.)

It lingers for some reason and you're probably wondering why babies feel the pain of teething.

Are you ready to be blown away with the awesomeness?

I believe it's for the parents, not the baby.

This is the first time a healthy baby will feel total pain and you can't do anything about it. It's to let you know that. To show you how it feels when your baby is hurting and that nothing you can do will help.

You can calm him/her, you can give some temporary relief but in the end they are going to feel all this pain...and the kicker is they won't remember a bit of it...but you will.

It's a primer on the rest of your life with this baby...it's to let you know that your baby will be OK after he falls from a halfpipe and separates his shoulder. That he will heal from getting a spring caught in his eye. And that even though the handlebars on his bike pierced his chin he'll be all right in a couple days and will only have a tiny scar to remember it. Yes those all happened to me.

So there you go that's the definitive theory on why babies feel the pain of teething...feel free to use this in any thesis or article you may be writing, just give me attribution. And if you're from the AMA please use the email tab in my nav bar to contact me about publishing this...thanks.